II     HUM  till  III  IHI  r  II 
$B    275    13fl 


GABRIEL 
TOUN 


Bus 

COT5> 


LIBRARY 

OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


ROBERT 
BURNS  : 


ROBERT 
BURNS 

BY 
GABRIEL   : 

:  SETOUN 

<ra/^-XA-4~A_ 


FAMOUS 

SCOTS: 

SERIES 


PUBLISHED  BY  9 
OUPHANT  ANDERSON 
VFERRIER'EDINBVRGH 
AND  LONDON  *Z>  ^ 

,'"'rl?  ^  ^ 

OF  THE  . 

(  UNIVERSITY  1 


' 


The  designs  and  ornaments  of  this 
volume  are  by  Mr.  Joseph  Brown, 
and  the  printing  from  the  press  of 
Morrison  &  Gibb  Limited,  Edinburgh. 

June  76*96. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

BIRTH  AND  EDUCATION    .....  7 

CHAPTER  II 

LOCHLEA  AND  MOSSGIEL     .....  2$ 

CHAPTER  III 
THE  SERIES  OF  SATIRES  .....         40 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE  KILMARNOCK  EDITION         ....          56 

CHAPTER  V 
THE  EDINBURGH  EDITION  ....          73 

CHAPTER  VI 
BURNS'S  TOURS      ......         92 

CHAPTER  VII 
ELLISLAND  .  .  .  .  .  .        in 

CHAPTER  VIII 
DUMFRIES  .......        128 

CHAPTER  IX 
SUMMARY  AND  ESTIMATE  .  .  .  .        148 


133189 


ROBERT    BURNS 

CHAPTER   I 

BIRTH   AND   EDUCATION 

OF  the  many  biographies  of  Robert  Burns  that  have 
been  written,  most  of  them  laboriously  and  carefully, 
perhaps  not  one  gives  so  luminous  and  vivid  a  portrait, 
so  lifelike  and  vigorous  an  impression  of  the  personality 
of  the  poet  and  the  man,  as  the  picture  the  author  has 
given  of  himself  in  his  own  writings.  Burns's  poems 
from  first  to  last  are,  almost  without  exception,  the 
literary  embodiment  of  his  feelings  at  a  particular 
moment.  He  is  for  ever  revealing  himself  to  the 
reader,  even  in  poems  that  might  with  propriety  be 
said  to  be  purely  objective.  His  writings  in  a  greater 
degree  than  the  writings  of  any  other  author  are  the 
direct  expression  of  his  own  experiences  ;  and  in  his 
poems  and  songs  he  is  so  invariably  true  to  himself,  so 
dominated  by  the  mood  of  the  moment,  that  every  one 
of  them  gives  us  some  glimpse  into  the  heart  and  soul 
of  the  writer.  In  his  letters  he  is  rarely  so  happy  ;  fre- 
quently he  is  writing  up  to  certain  models,  and  ceases  to 
be  natural.  Consequently  we  often  miss  in  them  the 
character  and  spirituality  that  is  never  absent  from  his 


8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

poetry.  But  his  poems  and  songs,  chronologically 
arranged,  might  make  in  themselves,  and  without  the 
aid  of  any  running  commentary,  a  tolerably  complete 
biography.  Reading  them,  we  note  the  development  of 
his  character  and  the  growth  of  his  powers  as  a  poet  j 
we.  can  see  at  any  particular  time  his  attitude  towards 
the  world,  and  the  world's  attitude  towards  him ;  we 
have,  in  fine,  a  picture  of  the  man  in  his  relations  to  his 
fellow-man  and  in  relation  to  circumstances,  and  may 
learn  if  we  will  what  mark  he  made  on  the  society  of 
his  time,  and  what  effect  that  society  had  on  him. 
And  that  surely  is  an  important  essential  of  perfect 
biography. 

But  otherwise  the  story  of  Burns's  life  has  been  told 
with  such  minuteness  of  detail,  that  the  internal  evidence 
of  his  poetry  would  seem  only  to  be  called  in  to  verify 
or  correct  the  verdict  of  tradition  and  the  garbled  gossip 
of  those  wise  after  the  fact  of  his  fame.  It  is  so  easy 
after  a  man  has  compelled  the  attention  of  the  world 
to  fill  up  the  empty  years  of  his  life  when  he  was  all 
unknown  to  fame,  with  illustrative  anecdotes  and  almost 
forgotten  incidents,  revealed  and  coloured  by  the  light 
of  after  events !  This  is  a  penalty  of  genius,  and  it  is 
sometimes  called  fame,  as  if  fame  were  a  gift  given  of 
the  world  out  of  a  boundless  and  unintelligent  curiosity, 
and  not  the  life-record  ot  work  achieved.  It  is  easier  to 
collect  ana  and  to  make  them  into  the  patchwork  pattern 
of  a  life  than  to  read  the  character  of  the  man  in  his 
writings;  and  patchwork,  of  necessity,  has  more  of 
colour  than  the  homespun  web  of  a  peasant-poet. 

Burns  has  suffered  sorely  at  the  hands  of  the  anecdote- 
monger.  One  great  feature  of  his  poems  is  their  perfect 


ROBERT  BURNS  9 

sincerity.  He  pours  out  his  soul  in  song ;  tells  the  tale 
of  his  loves,  his  joys  and  sorrows,  of  his  faults  and 
failings,  and  the  awful  pangs  of  remorse.  And  if  a  man 
be  candid  and  sincere,  he  will  be  taken  at  his  word  when 
he  makes  the  world  his  confessional,  and  calls  himself  a 
sinner.  There  is  pleasure  to  small  minds  in  discovering 
that  the  gods  are  only  clay ;  that  they  who  are  guides 
and  leaders  are  men  of  like  passions  with  themselves, 
subject  to  the  same  temptations,  and  as  liable  to  fall. 
This  is  the  consolation  of  mediocrity  in  the  presence  of 
genius;  and  if  from  the  housetops  the  poet  proclaims 
his  shortcomings,  the  world  will  hear  him  gladly  and 
believe;  his  faults  will  be  remembered,  and  his  genius 
forgiven.  What  more  easy  than  to  bear  out  his  testimony 
with  the  weight  of  collateral  evidence,  and  the  charitable 
anecdotage  of  acquaintances  who  knew  him  not  ?  Infor- 
mation that  is  vile  and  valueless  may  ever  be  had  for  the 
seeking;  and  it  needs  only  to  be  whispered  about  for 
a  season  to  find  its  way  ultimately  into  print,  and  to 
flourish. 

It  might  naturally  be  expected  at  this  time  of  day  that 
all  that  is  merely  mythical  and  traditional  might  have 
been  sifted  from  what  is  accredited  and  attested  fact, 
that  the  chaff  might  have  been  winnowed  from  the  grain 
in  the  life  of  Burns.  In  some  of  the  most  recently- 
published  biographies  this  has  been  most  carefully  and 
conscientiously  done;  but  through  so  many  years  wild 
and  improbable  stories  had  been  allowed  to  thrive  and 
to  go  unchallenged,  that  fiction  has  come  to  take  the 
colour  and  character  of  fact,  and  to  pass  into  history. 
*  The  general  impression  of  the  place,'  that  unfortunate 
phrase  on  which  the  late  George  Gilfillan  based  an 


io  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

unpardonable  attack  on  the  character  of  the  poet,  has 
grown  by  slow  degrees,  and  gained  credence  by  the 
lapse  of  time,  till  it  is  accepted  as  the  general  impression 
of  the  country.  Those  who  would  speak  of  the  poet 
Robert  Burns  are  expected  to  speak  apologetically,  and 
to  point  a  moral  from  the  story  of  a  wasted  life.  For 
that  has  become  a  convention,  and  convention  is  always 
respectable.  But  after  all  is  said  and  done,  the  devil's 
advocate  makes  a  wretched  biographer.  It  seems 
strange  and  unaccountable  that  men  should  dare  to 
become  apologists  for  one  who  has  sung  himself  into 
the  heart  and  conscience  of  his  country,  and  taken  the 
ear  of  the  world.  Yet  there  have  been  apologists  even 
for  the  poetry  of  Burns.  We  are  told,  wofully,  that 
he  wrote  only  short  poems  and  songs ;  was  content  with 
occasional  pieces;  did  not  achieve  any  long  and  sus- 
tained effort — to  be  preserved,  it  is  to  be  expected,  in  a 
folio  edition,  and  assigned  a  fitting  place  among  other 
musty  and  hide -bound  immortals  on  the  shelves  of 
libraries  under  lock  and  key.  As  well  might  we  seek 
to  apologise  for  the  fields  and  meadows,  in  so  far  as 
they  bring  forth  neither  corn  nor  potatoes,  but  only 
grasses  and  flowers,  to  dance  to  the  piping  of  the  wind, 
and  nod  in  the  sunshine  of  summer. 

It  is  a  healthier  sign,  however,  that  the  more  recent 
biographers  of  Burns  snap  their  fingers  in  the  face  of 
convention,  and,  looking  to  the  legacy  he  has  left  the 
world,  refuse  to  sit  in  sackcloth  and  ashes  round  his 
grave,  either  in  the  character  of  moralising  mourners 
or  charitable  mutes.  Whatever  has  to  be  said  against 
them  nowadays,  the  'cant  of  concealment' — to  adopt 
another  of  Gilfillan's  phrases — is  not  to  be  laid  to  their 


ROBERT  BURNS  n 

charge.  Rather  have  they  rushed  to  the  other  extreme, 
and  in  their  eagerness  to  d©  justice  to  the  memory  of 
the  poet,  led  the  reader  astray  in  a  wilderness  of 
unnecessary  detail.  So  much  is  now  known  of  Burns, 
so  many  minute  and  unimportant  details  of  his  life  and 
the  lives  of  others  have  been  unearthed,  that  the  poet  is, 
so  to  speak,  buried  in  biography ;  the  character  and  the 
personality  of  the  man  lost  in  the  voluminous  testimony 
of  many  witnesses.  Reading,  we  note  the  care  and 
conscientiousness  of  the  writer ;  we  have  but  a  confused 
and  blurred  impression  of  the  poet.  Although  a  century 
has  passed  since  his  death,  we  do  not  yet  see  the  events 
of  Burns's  life  in  proper  perspective.  Things  trifling  in 
themselves,  and  of  little  bearing  on  his  character,  have 
been  preserved,  and  are  still  recorded  with  painful 
elaboration;  while  the  sidelights  from  friends,  com- 
panions, and  acquaintances,  male  and  female,  are  many 
and  bewildering. 

Would  it  not  be  possible  out  01  this  mass  of  material 
to  tell  the  story  of  Robert  Burns's  life  simply  and  clearly, 
neither  wandering  away  into  the  family  histories  and 
genealogies  of  a  crowd  of  uninteresting  contemporaries, 
nor  wasting  time  in  elaborating  inconsequential  trifles  ? 
What  is  wanted  is  a  picture  of  the  man  as  he  was,  and 
an  understanding  of  all  that  tended  to  make  him  the 
name  and  the  power  he  is  in  the  world  to-day. 

William  Burness,  the  father  of  the  poet,  was  a  native 
of  Kincardineshire,  and  *  was  thrown  by  early  misfortunes 
on  the  world  at  large.'  After  many  years'  wanderings, 
he  at  last  settled  in  Ayrshire,  where  he  worked  at  first 
as  a  gardener  before  taking  a  lease  of  some  seven  acres 
of  land  near  the  Bridge  of  Doon,  and  beginning  business 


12  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

as  a  nurseryman.  It  was  to  a  clay  cottage  which  he 
built  on  this  land  that  he  brought  his  wife,  Agnes  Broun, 
in  December  1757 ;  and  here  the  poet  was  born  in  1759. 
The  date  of  his  birth  is  not  likely  to  be  forgotten. 

'  Our  monarch's  hindmost  year  but  ane 
Was  five-and-twenty  days  begun, 
'Twas  then  a  blast  o'  Jan'war'  win* 
Blew  hansel  in  on  Robin.' 

To  his  father  Burns  owed  much ;  and  if  there  be  any- 
thing in  heredity  in  the  matter  of  genius,  it  was  from 
him  that  he  inherited  his  marvellous  mental  powers. 
His  mother  is  spoken  of  as  a  shrewd  and  sagacious 
woman,  with  education  enough  to  enable  her  to  read  her 
Bible,  but  unable  to  write  her  own  name.  She  had  a 
great  love  for  old  ballads,  and  Robert  as  a  boy  must 
often  have  listened  to  her  chanting  the  quaint  old  songs 
with  which  her  retentive  memory  was  stored.  The  poet 
resembled  his  mother  in  feature,  although  he  had  the 
swarthy  complexion  of  his  father.  Attempts  have  been 
made  now  and  again  to  trace  his  ancestry  on  the 
father's  side,  and  to  give  to  the  world  a  kind  of 
genealogy  of  genius.  Writers  have  demonstrated  to 
their  own  satisfaction  that  it  was  perfectly  natural  that 
Burns  should  have  been  the  man  he  was.  But  the 
other  children  of  William  Burness  were  not  great  poets. 
It  has  even  been  discovered  that  his  genius  was  Celtic, 
whatever  that  may  mean  !  Excursions  and  speculations 
of  this  kind  are  vain  and  unprofitable,  hardly  more 
reputable  than  the  profanities  of  the  Dumfries  crani- 
ologists  who,  in  1834,  in  the  early  hours  of  April  ist, — 
a  day  well  chosen, — desecrated  the  poet's  dust.  They 
fingered  his  skull,  'applied  their  compasses  to  it,  and 


ROBERT  BURNS  13 

satisfied  themselves  that  Burns  had  capacity  enough  to 
write  Tarn  tf  Shanter,  The  Cotters  Saturday  Night,  and 
To  Mary  in  Heaven?  Let  us  take  the  poet  as  he  comes 
to  us,  a  gift  of  the  gods,  and  be  thankful.  As  La 
Bruyere  puts  it,  *Ces  hommes  n'ont  ni  ancetres  ni 
poste'rite's ;  ils  ferment  eux  seuls  toute  une  de- 
scendance.' 

What  Burns  owed  particularly  to  his  father  he  has 
told  us  himself  both  in  prose  and  verse.  The  exquisite 
and  beautiful  picture  of  the  father  and  his  family  at 
their  evening  devotions  is  taken  from  life ;  and  William 
Burness  is  the  sire  who 

'turns  o'er  with  patriarchal  grace 
The  big  ha' -bible  ance  his  father's  pride  ' ; 

and  in  his  fragment  of  autobiography  the  poet  remarks : 
' My  father  picked  up  a  pretty  large  quantity  of  ob- 
servation and  experience,  to  which  I  am  indebted  for 
most  of  my  pretensions  to  wisdom.  I  have  met  with 
few  men  who  understood  men,  their  manners  and  their 
ways,  equal  to  him ;  but  stubborn,  ungainly  integrity  and 
headlong,  ungovernable  irascibility  are  disqualifying  cir- 
cumstances ;  consequently  I  was  born  a  very  poor  man's 
son.  ...  It  was  his  dearest  wish  and  prayer  to  have  it 
in  his  power  to  keep  his  children  under  his  own  eye  till 
they  could  discern  between  good  and  evil ;  so  with  the 
assistance  of  his  generous  master,  he  ventured  on  a  small 
farm  in  that  gentleman's  estate.' 

This  estimate  of  William  Burness  is  endorsed  and 
amplified  by  Mr.  Murdoch,  who  had  been  engaged  by 
him  to  teach  his  children,  and  knew  him  intimately. 

*  I  myself,'  he  says,  '  have  always  considered  William 


I4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Burness  as  by  far  the  best  of  the  human  race  that  ever 
I  had  the  pleasure  of  being  acquainted  with.  He  was 
an  excellent  husband ;  a  tender  and  affectionate  father. 
He  had  the  art  of  gaining  the  esteem  and  goodwill  of 
those  that  were  labourers  under  him.  He  carefully 
practised  every  known  duty,  and  avoided  everything 
that  was  criminal ;  or,  in  the  apostle's  words,  Herein  did 
he  exercise  himself  in  living  a  life  void  of  offence  towards 
God  and  man.1 

Even  in  his  manner  of  speech  he  was  different  from 
men  in  his  own  walk  in  life.  '  He  spoke  the  English 
language  with  more  propriety  (both  with  respect  to 
diction  and  pronunciation)  than  any  man  I  ever  knew 
with  no  greater  advantages.' 

Truly  was  Burns  blessed  in  his  parents,  especially  in 
his  father.  Naturally  such  a  father  wished  his  children 
to  have  the  best  education  his  means  could  afford.  It 
may  be  that  he  saw  even  in  the  infancy  of  his  firstborn 
the  promise  of  intellectual  greatness.  Certain  it  is  he 
laboured,  as  few  fathers  even  in  Scotland  have  done,  to 
have  his  children  grow  up  intelligent,  thoughtful,  and 
virtuous  men  and  women. 

Robert  Burns's  first  school  was  at  Alloway  Mill,  about 
a  mile  from  home,  whither  he  was  sent  when  in  his 
sixth  year.  He  had  not  been  long  there,  however,  when 
the  father  combined  with  a  few  of  his  neighbours  to 
establish  a  teacher  in  their  own  neighbourhood.  That 
teacher  was  Mr.  Murdoch,  a  young  man  at  that  time  in 
his  nineteenth  year. 

This  is  an  important  period  in  the  poet's  life,  although 
he  himself  in  his  autobiography  only  briefly  touches  on 
his  schooling  under  Murdoch.  He  has  more  to  say  of 


ROBERT  BURNS  15 

what  he  owed  to  an  old  maid  of  his  mother's,  remark- 
able for  her  ignorance,  credulity,  and  superstition. 
'She  had,  I  suppose,  the  largest  collection  in  the 
country  of  tales  and  songs  concerning  devils,  ghosts, 
fairies,  brownies,  witches,  warlocks,  spunkies,  kelpies, 
elf-candles,  dead-lights,  wraiths,  apparitions,  cantraips, 
enchanted  towers,  giants,  dragons,  and  other  trumpery. 
This  cultivated  the  latent  seeds  of  Poesy ;  but  had  so 
strong  an  effect  on  my  imagination,  that  to  this  hour, 
in  my  nocturnal  rambles,  I  sometimes  keep  a  sharp  look- 
out in  suspicious  places;  and  though  nobody  can  be 
more  sceptical  in  these  matters  than  I,  yet  it  often 
takes  an  effort  of  philosophy  to  shake  off  these  idle 
terrors.' 

It  ought  not  to  be  forgotten  that  Burns  had  a  better 
education  than  most  lads  of  his  time.  Even  in  the 
present  day  many  in  better  positions  have  not  the 
advantages  that  Robert  and  Gilbert  Burns  had,  the 
sons  of  such  a  father  as  William  Burness,  and  under 
such  an  earnest  and  thoughtful  teacher  as  Mr.  Murdoch. 
It  is  important  to  notice  this,  because  Burns  is  too  often 
regarded  merely  as  a  lusus  natures ;  a  being  gifted  with 
song,  and  endowed  by  nature  with  understanding  from 
his  birth.  We  hear  too  much  of  the  ploughman  poet. 
His  genius  and  natural  abilities  are  unquestioned  and 
unquestionable;  but  there  is  more  than  mere  natural 
genius  in  his  writings.  They  are  the  work  of  a  man 
of  no  mean  education,  and  bear  the  stamp — however 
spontaneously  his  songs  sing  themselves  in  our  ears — of 
culture  and  study.  In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Moore  several 
years  later  than  now,  Burns  himself  declared  against 
the  popular  view.  '  I  have  not  a  doubt  but  the  knack, 


16  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  aptitude  to  learn  the  Muses'  trade  is  a  gift 
bestowed  by  Him  who  forms  the  secret  bias  of  the 
soul  j  but  I  as  firmly  believe  that  excellence  in  the 
profession  is  the  fruit  of  industry,  attention,  labour, 
and  pains.  At  least  I  am  resolved  to  try  my  doctrine 
by  the  test  of  experience.'  There  is  a  class  of  people, 
however,  to  whom  this  will  sound  heretical,  forbidding 
them,  as  it  were,  the  right  to  babble  with  grovelling 
familiarity  of  Rab,  Rob,  Robbie,  Scotia's  Bard,  and 
the  Ploughman  Poet ;  and  insisting  on  his  name  being 
spoken  with  conscious  pride  of  utterance,  Robert  Burns, 
Poet. 

Gilbert  Burns,  writing  to  Dr.  Currie  of  the  school-days 
under  Mr.  Murdoch,  says :  '  We  learnt  to  read  English 
tolerably  well,  and  to  write  a  little.  He  taught  us,  too, 
the  English  Grammar.  I  was  too  young  to  profit  much 
by  his  lessons  in  grammar,  but  Robert  made  some  pro- 
ficiency in  it — a  circumstance  of  considerable  weight  in 
the  unfolding  of  his  genius  and  character,  as  he  soon 
became  remarkable  for  the  fluency  and  correctness  of 
his  expression,  and  read  the  few  books  that  came  in 
his  way  with  much  pleasure  and  improvement ;  for  even 
then  he  was  a  reader  when  he  could  get  a  book.' 

After  the  family  removed  to  Mount  Oliphant,  the 
brothers  attended  Mr.  Murdoch's  school  for  two  years 
longer,  until  Mr.  Murdoch  was  appointed  to  a  better 
situation,  and  the  little  school  was  broken  up.  There- 
after the  father  looked  after  the  education  of  his  boys 
himself,  not  only  helping  them  with  their  reading  at 
home  after  the  labours  of  the  day,  but  'conversing 
familiarly  with  them  on  all  subjects,  as  if  they  had  been 
men,  and  being  at  great  pains,  as  they  accompanied 


ROBERT  BURNS  17 

him  on  the  labours  of  the  farm,  to  lead  conversation  to 
such  subjects  as  might  tend  to  increase  their  knowledge 
or  confirm  them  in  virtuous  habits/  Among  the  books 
he  borrowed  or  bought  for  them  at  that  period  were 
Salmon's  Geographical  Grammar,  Derham's  Physico- 
Theology,  Ray's  Wisdom  of  God  in  the  Works  of 
Creation,  and  Stackhouse's  History  of  the  Bible.  It 
was  about  this  time,  too,  that  Robert  became  possessed 
of  The  Complete  Letter- Writer,  a  book  which  Gilbert 
declared  was  to  Robert  of  the  greatest  consequence, 
since  it  inspired  him  with  a  great  desire  to  excel  in 
letter-writing,  and  furnished  him  with  models  by  some 
of  the  first  writers  in  our  language.  Perhaps  this  book 
was  a  great  gain.  It  is  questionable.  What  would 
Robert  Burns's  letters  have  been  had  he  never  seen  a 
Complete  Letter- Writer,  and  never  read  *  those  models 
by  some  of  the  first  writers  in  our  language'?  Easier 
and  more  natural,  we  are  of  opinion;  and  he  might 
have  written  fewer.  Those  in  the  Complete  Letter- 
Writer  style  we  could  easily  have  spared.  His  teacher, 
Mr.  Murdoch,  furnishes  some  excellent  examples  of  the 
stilted  epistolary  style  that  was  then  fashionable. 

'But  now  the  plains  of  Mount  Oliphant  began  to 
whiten,  and  Robert  was  summoned  to  relinquish  the 
pleasing  scenes  that  surrounded  the  grotto  of  Calypso, 
and,  armed  with  a  sickle,  to  seek  glory  by  signalising 
himself  in  the  fields  of  Ceres.'  Though  Robert  Burns 
never  perpetrated  anything  like  this,  his  models  were 
not  without  their  pernicious  effect  on  his  prose  com- 
positions. 

When  Robert  was  about  fourteen  years  old,  he  and 
Gilbert  were  sent  for  a  time,  week  about,  to  a  school 

2 


i8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

at  Dalrymple,  and  the  year  following  Robert  was  sent 
to  Ayr  to  revise  his  English  grammar  under  Mr.  Mur- 
doch. While  there  he  began  the  study  of  French, 
bringing  with  him,  when  he  returned  home,  a  French 
Dictionary  and  Grammar  and  Fenelon's  Telemaque. 
In  a  little  while  he  could  read  and  understand  any 
French  author  in  prose.  He  also  gave  some  time  to 
Latin;  but  finding  it  dry  and  uninteresting  work,  he 
soon  gave  it  up.  Still  he  must  have  picked  up  a  little 
of  that  language,  and  we  know  that  he  returned  to  the 
rudiments  frequently,  although  'the  Latin  seldom  pre- 
dominated, a  day  or  two  at  a  time,  or  a  week  at  most.' 
Under  the  heading  of  general  reading  might  be  men- 
tioned The  Life  of  Hannibal,  The  Life  of  Wallace,  The 
Spectator,  Pope's  Homer,  Locke's  Essay  on  the  Human 
Understanding,  Allan  Ramsay's  Works,  and  several 
Plays  of  Shakspeare.  All  this  is  worth  noting,  even  at 
some  length,  because  it  shows  how  Burns  was  being 
educated,  and  what  books  went  to  form  and  improve 
his  literary  taste. 

Yet  when  we  consider  the  circumstances  of  the 
family  we  see  that  there  was  not  much  time  for  study. 
The  work  on  the  farm  allowed  Burns  little  leisure,  but 
every  spare  moment  would  seem  to  have  been  given 
to  reading.  Father  and  sons,  we  are  told  by  one  who 
afterwards  knew  the  family  at  Lochlea,  used  to  sit  at 
their  meals  with  books  in  their  hands ;  and  the  poet 
says  that  one  book  in  particular,  A  Select  Collection  of 
English  Songs,  was  his  vade  mecum.  He  pored  over 
them,  driving  his  cart  or  walking  to  labour,  song  by 
song,  verse  by  verse,  carefully  noting  the  true,  tender,  or 
sublime  from  affectation  or  fustian.  '  I  am  convinced,' 


ROBERT  BURNS  19 

he  adds,  *  I  owe  to  this  practice  much  of  my  critic  craft, 
such  as  it  is.' 

The  years  of  their  stay  at  Mount  Oliphant  were  years  of 
unending  toil  and  of  poverty  bravely  borne.  The  whole 
period  was  a  long  fight  against  adverse  circumstances. 
Looking  back  on  his  life  at  this  time,  Burns  speaks  of 
it  as  'the  cheerless  gloom  of  a  hermit  with  the  un- 
ceasing moil  of  a  galley  slave ' ;  and  we  can  well  believe 
that  this  is  no  exaggerated  statement.  His  brother 
Gilbert  is  even  more  emphatic.  'Mount  Oliphant,' 
he  says,  'is  almost  the  poorest  soil  I  know  of  in  a 
state  of  cultivation.  ...  My  father,  in  consequence 
of  this,  soon  came  into  difficulties,  which  were  increased 
by  the  loss  of  several  of  his  cattle  by  accident  and 
disease.  To  the  buffetings  of  misfortune  we  could  only 
oppose  hard  labour  and  the  most  rigid  economy.  We 
lived  very  sparingly.  For  several  years  butcher's  meat 
was  a  stranger  in  the  house,  while  all  the  members  of 
the  family  exerted  themselves  to  the  utmost  of  their 
strength,  and  rather  beyond  it,  in  the  labours  of  the 
farm.  My  brother,  at  the  age  of  thirteen,  assisted  in 
thrashing  the  crop  of  corn,  and  at  fifteen  was  the 
principal  labourer  on  the  farm;  for  we  had  no  hired 
servant,  male  or  female.  The  anguish  of  mind  we  felt 
at  our  tender  years  under  these  straits  and  difficulties 
was  very  great.  To  think  of  our  father  growing  old 
(for  he  was  now  above  fifty),  broken  down  with  the 
long-continued  fatigues  of  his  life,  with  a  wife  and  five 
other  children,  and  in  a  declining  state  of  circumstances, 
these  reflections  produced  in  my  brother's  mind  and 
mine  sensations  of  the  deepest  distress.  I  doubt  not 
but  the  hard  labour  and  sorrow  of  this  period  of  his 


20  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

life  was  in  a  great  measure  the  cause  of  that  depression  of 
spirits  with  which  Robert  was  so  often  afflicted  through 
his  whole  life  afterwards.  At  this  time  he  was  almost 
constantly  afflicted  in  the  evenings  with  a  dull  head- 
ache, which  at  a  future  period  of  his  life  was  exchanged 
for  a  palpitation  of  the  heart  and  a  threatening  of 
fainting  and  suffocation  in  his  bed  in  the  night-time.' 

This,  we  doubt  not,  is  a  true  picture — melancholy, 
yet  beautiful.  But  not  only  did  this  increasing  toil  and 
worry  to  make  both  ends  meet,  injure  the  bodily  health 
of  the  poet,  but  it  did  harm  to  him  in  other  ways.  It 
affected,  to  a  certain  extent,  his  moral  nature.  Those 
bursts  of  bitterness  which  we  find  now  and  again  in 
his  poems,  and  more  frequently  in  his  letters,  are 
assuredly  the  natural  outcome  of  these  unsocial  and 
laborious  years.  Burns  was  a  man  of  sturdy  independ- 
ence; too  often  this  independence  became  aggressive. 
He  was  a  man  of  marvellous  keenness  of  perception ; 
too  frequently  did  this  manifest  itself  in  a  sulky  suspicion, 
a  harshness  of  judgment,  and  a  bitterness  of  speech. 
We  say  this  in  no  spirit  of  fault-finding,  but  merely 
point  it  out  as  a  natural  consequence  of  a  wretched 
and  leisureless  existence.  This  was  the  education  of 
circumstances — hard  enough  in  Burns's  case;  and  if  it 
developed  in  him  certain  sterling  qualities,  gave  him 
an  insight  into  and  a  sympathy  with  the  lives  of  his 
struggling  fellows,  it  at  the  same  time  warped,  to  a 
certain  extent,  his  moral  nature. 

What  was  his  outlook  on  the  world  at  this  time  ?  He 
measured  himself  with  those  he  met,  we  may  be  sure, 
for  Burns  certainly  (as  he  says  of  his  father)  '  under- 
stood men,  their  manners  and  their  ways/  as  it  is  given 


ROBERT  BURNS  21 

to  very  few  to  be  able  to  do.  Of  the  ploughmen,  farmers, 
lairds,  or  factors,  he  saw  round  about  him  there  was  none 
to  compare  with  him  in  natural  ability,  few  his  equal  in 
field-work.  'At  the  plough,  scythe,  or  reap-hook,'  he 
remarks,  *  I  feared  no  competitor,'  Yet,  conscious  of 
easy  superiority,  he  saw  himself  a  drudge,  almost  a  slave, 
while  those  whom  nature  had  not  blessed  with  brains 
were  gifted  with  a  goodly  share  of  this  world's  wealtru 

It's  hardly  in  a  body's  power 

To  keep  at  times  frae  being  sour, 

To  see  how  things  are  shar'd  ; 

How  best  o'  chiels  are  whiles  in  want, 

While  coofs  on  countless  thousands  rant, 

An*  ken  na  how  to  wair  't.£ 

His  father,  his  brother,  and  himself — all  the  members 
of  the  family  indeed — toiled  unceasingly,  yet  were  unable 
to  better  their  position.  Matters,  indeed,  got  worse,  and 
worst  of  all  when  their  landlord  died,  and  they  were  left 
to  the  tender  mercies  of  a  factor.  The  name  of  this  man 
we  do  not  know,  nor  need  we  seek  to  know  it.  We  know 
the  man  himself,  and  he  will  live  for  ever  a  type  of 
tyrannous,  insolent  insignificance. 

1  I've  noticed,  on  our  Laird's  court-day, 
An1  mony  a  time  my  heart's  been  wae, 
Poor  tenant  bodies,  scant  o'  cash, 
How  they  maun  thole  a  factor's  snash  : 
He'll  stamp  an'  threaten,  curse  an   swear, 
He'll  apprehend  them,  poind  their  gear: 
While  they  maun  stan',  wi'  aspect  humble, 
An'  hear  it  a',  an'  fear  an'  tremble.' 

Is  it  to  be  wondered  at  that  Burns's  blood  boiled  at 
times,  or  that  he  should  now  and  again  look  at  those  in 
easier  circumstances  with  snarling  suspicion,  and  give 


22  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

vent  to  his  feelings  in  words  of  rankling  bitterness? 
Robert  Burns  and  h.s  father  were  just  such  men  as  an 
insolent  factor  would  take  a  fiendish  delight  in  torturing. 
'  My  indignation  yet  boils,  Burns  wrote  years  afterwards, 
'at  the  recollection  of  the  scoundrel  factor's  insolent, 
threatening  letters,  which  used  to  set  us  all  in  tears.' 
Had  they  'boo'd  and  becked'  at  his  bidding,  and 
grovelled  at  his  feet,  he  might  have  had  some  glimmering 
sense  of  justice,  and  thought  it  mercy.  But  the  Burnses 
were  men  of  a  different  stamp.  'William  Burness  always 
treated  superiors  with  a  becoming  respect,  but  he  never 
gave  the  smallest  encouragement  to  aristocratical  arro- 
gance ' ;  and  his  son  Robert  was  not  less  manly  and 
independent.  He  was  too  sound  in  judgment;  too 
conscious  of  his  own  worth,  to  sink  into  mean  and  abject 
servility.  But  this  factor,  perhaps  more  than  anyone 
else,  did  much  to  pervert,  if  he  could  not  kill,  the  poet's 
spirit  of  independence. 

Curiously  enough,  the  opening  sentences  of  his  auto- 
biographical sketch  have  a  suspicious  ring  of  the  pride 
that  apes  humility.  There  is  something  harsh  and 
aggressive  in  his  unnecessary  confidence.  '  I  have  not 
the  most  distant  pretensions  to  assume  the  character 
which  the  pye-coated  guardians  of  escutcheons  call  a 
gentleman.  When  at  Edinburgh  last  winter  I  got  ac- 
quainted at  the  Herald's  office;  and,  looking  through 
that  granary  of  honours,  I  there  found  almost  every  name 
in  the  kingdom  ;  but  for  me, 

"My  ancient  but  ignoble  blood 
Had  crept  through  scoundrels  ever  since  the  flood." 

Gules,  Purpure,  Argent,  etc.,  quite  disowned  me.'  All 
this  is  quite  gratuitous  and  hardly  in  good  taste. 


ROBERT  BURNS  23 

Yet,  in  spite  of  untoward  circumstances,  ceaseless 
drudgery,  and  insufficient  diet,  the  family  of  Mount 
Oliphant  was  not  utterly  lost  to  happiness.  With  such  a 
shrewd  mother  and  such  a  father  as  William  Burness — 
a  man  of  whom  Scotland  may  be  justly  proud — no  home 
could  be  altogether  unhappy.  In  Burns's  picture  of  the 
family  circle  in  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  there  is 
nothing  of  bitterness  or  gloom  or  melancholy. 

'With  joy  unfeign'd  brothers  and  sisters  meet, 

An'  each  for  other's  welfare  kindly  spiers  : 
The  social  hours,  swift-wing'd,  unnotic'd  fleet ; 

Each  tells  the  uncos  that  he  sees  or  hears. 
The  parents,  partial,  eye  their  hopeful  years ; 

Anticipation  forward  points  the  view : 
The  mother,  wi'  her  needle  an'  her  shears, 

Gars  auld  claes  look  amaist  as  weel's  the  new  ; 
The  father  mixes  a'  wi'  admonition  due.' 

In  the  work  of  the  farm,  too,  hard  as  it  was,  there  was 
pleasure,  and  the  poet's  first  song,  with  the  picture  he 
gives  of  the  partners  in  the  harvest  field,  breaks  forth 
from  this  life  of  cheerless  gloom  and  unceasing  moil  like 
a  blink  of  sunshine  through  a  lowering  sky.  Burns's 
description  of  how  the  song  came  to  be  made  is  worthy 
of  quotation,  because  it  gives  us  a  very  clear  and  well- 
defined  likeness  of  himself  at  the  time,  a  lad  in  years, 
but  already  counting  himself  among  men.  '  You  know 
our  country  custom  of  coupling  a  man  and  a  woman 
together  in  the  labours  of  harvest.  In  my  fifteenth 
autumn  my  partner  was  a  bewitching  creature  who  just 
counted  an  autumn  less.  In  short,  she,  unwittingly  to 
herself,  initiated  me  into  a  certain  delicious  passion, 
which ...  I  hold  to  be  the  first  of  human  joys.  ...  I  did  not 
well  know  myself  why  I  liked  so  much  to  loiter  behind 


24  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

her  when  returning  in  the  evening  from  our  labours ; 
why  the  tones  of  her  voice  made  my  heart-strings  thrill 
like  an  ^Eolian  harp ;  and  particularly  why  my  pulse 
beat  such  a  furious  rantann  when  I  looked  and  fingered 
over  her  hand  to  pick  out  the  nettle-stings  and  thistles, 
Among  her  other  love-inspiring  qualifications  she  sang 
sweetly;  and  'twas  her  favourite  Scotch  reel  that  I  at- 
tempted to  give  an  embodied  vehicle  to  in  rhyme.  I 
was  not  so  presumptive  as  to  imagine  I  could  make  verses 
like  printed  ones  composed  by  men  who  had  Greek  and 
Latin  j  but  my  girl  sung  a  song  which  was  said  to  be 
composed  by  a  small  country  laird's  son,  on  one  of  his 
father's  maids  with  whom  he  was  in  love ;  and  I  saw  no 
reason  why  I  might  not  rhyme  as  well  as  he,' 

He  had  already  measured  himself  with  this  moorland 
poet,  and  admits  no  inferiority ;  and  what  a  laird's  son 
has  done  he  too  may  do.  Writing  of  this  song  afterwards, 
Burns,  who  was  always  a  keen  critic,  admits  that  it  is 
'very  puerile  and  silly.'  Still,  we  think  there  is  something 
of  beauty,  and  much  of  promise,  in  this  early  effusion. 
It  has  at  least  one  of  the  merits,  and,  in  a  sense,  the 
peculiar  characteristic  of  all  Burns's  songs.  It  is  sincere 
and  natural ;  and  that  is  the  beginning  of  all  good  writing. 

'Thus  with  me,'  he  says,  'began  love  and  poetry, 
which  at  times  have  been  my  only  and  ...  my  highest 
enjoyment.'  This  was  the  first-fruit  of  his  poetic  genius, 
and  we  doubt  not  that  in  the  composition,  and  after  the 
composition,  life  at  Mount  Oliphant  was  neither  so 
cheerless  nor  so  hard  as  it  had  been.  A  new  life  was 
opened  up  to  him  with  a  thousand  nameless  hopes  and 
aspirations,  though  probably  as  yet  he  kept  all  these 
things  to  himself,  and  pondered  them  in  his  heart. 


CHAPTER    II 

LOCHLEA  AND   MOSSGIEL 

THE  farm  at  Mount  Oliphant  proved  a  ruinous  failure, 
and  after  weathering  their  last  two  years  on  it  under  the 
tyranny  of  the  scoundrel  factor,  it  was  with  feelings  of 
relief,  we  may  be  sure,  that  the  family  removed  to  Loch- 
lea,  in  the  parish  of  Tarbolton.  This  was  a  farm  of  130 
acres  of  land  rising  from  the  right  bank  of  the  river  Ayr. 
The  farm  appeared  to  them  more  promising  than  the 
one  they  had  left.  The  prospect  from  its  uplands  was 
extensive  and  beautiful.  It  commanded  a  view  of  the 
Carrick  Hills,  and  the  Firth  of  Clyde  beyond ;  but  where 
there  are  extensive  views  to  be  had  the  land  is  neces- 
sarily exposed.  The  farm  itself  was  bleak  and  bare,  and 
twenty  shillings  an  acre  was  a  high  rent  for  fields  so 
situated. 

The  younger  members  of  the  family,  however,  were 
now  old  enough  to  be  of  some  assistance  in  the  house 
or  in  the  fields,  and  for  a  few  years  life  was  brighter  than 
it  had  been  before  ;  not  that  labour  was  lighter  to  them 
here,  but  simply  because  they  had  escaped  the  meshes 
and  machinations  of  a  petty  tyrant,  and  worked  more 
cheerfully,  looking  to  the  future  with  confidence.  Father, 
mother,  and  children  all  worked  as  hard  as  they  were 
able,  and  none  more  ungrudgingly  than  the  poet. 


26  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

We  know  little  about  those  first  few  years  of  life  at 
Lochlea,  which  should  be  matter  for  special  thanks- 
giving. Better  we  should  know  nothing  at  all  than  that 
we  should  learn  of  misfortunes  coming  upon  them,  and 
see  the  family  again  in  tears  and  forced  to  thole  a  factor's 
snash ;  better  silence  than  the  later  unsavoury  episodes, 
which  have  not  yet  been  allowed  decent  burial.  Prob- 
ably life  went  evenly  and  beautifully  in  those  days. 
The  brothers  accompanied  their  father  to  the  fields ; 
Agnes  milked  the  cows,  reciting  the  while  to  her  younger 
sisters,  Annabella  and  Isabella,  snatches  of  song  or 
psalm ;  and  in  the  evening  the  whole  family  would  again 
gather  round  the  ingle  to  raise  their  voices  in  Dundee  or 
Martyrs  or  Elgin,  and  then  to  hear  the  priest-like  father 
read  the  sacred  page. 

The  little  that  we  do  know  is  worth  recording. 
'  Gilbert/  to  quote  from  Chambers's  excellent  edition  of 
the  poet's  works,  '  used  to  speak  of  his  brother  as  being 
at  this  period  a  more  admirable  being  than  at  any  other. 
He  recalled  with  delight  the  days  when  they  had  to  go 
with  one  or  two  companions  to  cut  peats  for  the  winter 
fuel,  because  Robert  was  sure  to  enliven  their  toil  with 
a  rattling  fire  of  witty  remarks  of  men  and  things, 
mingled  with  the  expressions  of  a  genial  glowing  heart, 
and  the  whole  perfectly  free  from  the  taint  which  he 
afterwards  acquired  from  his  contact  with  the  world. 
Not  even  in  those  volumes  which  afterwards  charmed  his 
country  from  end  to  end,  did  Gilbert  see  his  brother  in  so 
interesting  a  light  as  in  those  conversations  in  the  bog, 
with  only  two  or  three  noteless  peasants  for  an  audience.' 

This  is  a  beautiful  picture:  the  poet  enlivening  toil 
with  talk,  lighting  and  illustrating  all  he  said  with  his 


ROBERT  BURNS  27 

lively  imagination ;  Gilbert  listening  silently,  and  a  group 
of  noteless  peasants  dumb  with  wonder.  No  artist  has 
yet  painted  this  picture  of  Burns,  as  his  brother  saw  him, 
at  his  best.  Writers  have  glanced  at  the  scene  and 
passed  it  by.  It  needed  to  be  looked  at  with  naked, 
appreciative  eyes ;  they  had  come  with  microscopes  to 
the  study  of  Burns.  Far  more  interesting  material 
awaited  them  farther  on  •  The  Poets  Welcome,  for  ex- 
ample! They  could  amplify  that.  Here,  too,  is  the 
first  hint  of  Burns's  brilliant  powers  as  a  talker;  a 
glimpse  on  this  lonely  peat  moss  of  the  man  who,  not 
many  years  afterwards,  was  to  dazzle  literary  Edinburgh 
with  the  sparkle  and  force  of  his  graphic  speech. 

Probably  it  was  about  this  time  that  Burns  went  for 
a  summer  to  a  school  at  Kirkoswald.  In  his  autobio- 
graphy he  says  it  was  his  seventeenth  year,  and,  if  so, 
it  must  have  been  before  the  family  had  left  Mount 
Oliphant.  Gilbert's  recollection  was  that  the  poet 
was  then  in  his  nineteenth  year,  which  would  bring 
the  incident  into  the  Lochlea  period.  In  the  new 
edition  of  Chambers's  Burns,  William  Wallace  accepts 
Robert's  statement  as  correct ;  yet  we  hardly  think  the 
poet  would  have  spent  a  summer  at  school  at  a  time 
when  the  family  was  under  the  heel  of  that  merciless 
factor.  Besides,  although  he  speaks  of  his  seventeenth 
year,  he  has  just  made  mention  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
in  the  secret  of  half  the  amours  of  the  parish ;  and  it 
was  in  the  parish  of  Tarbolton  that  we  hear  of  him 
acting  *  as  the  second  of  night-hunting  swains.'  Prob- 
ably also  it  would  be  after  the  family  had  found  com- 
parative peace  and  quiet  in  their  new  home  that  it  would 
occur  to  Burns  to  resume  his  studies  in  a  methodical 


28  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

way.  The  point  is  a  small  one.  The  important  thing 
is,  that  in  his  seventeenth  or  nineteenth  summer  he  went 
to  a  noted  school  on  a  smuggling  coast  to  learn  mathe- 
matics, surveying,  dialling,  etc.,  in  which  he  made  a 
pretty  good  progress.  '  But,'  he  says,  '  I  made  a  greater 
progress  in  the  knowledge  of  mankind.  The  contraband 
trade  was  at  this  time  very  successful ;  scenes  of  swag- 
gering riot  and  roaring  dissipation  were  as  yet  new  to 
me,  and  I  was  no  enemy  to  social  life.  Here,  though  I 
learnt  to  look  unconcernedly  on  a  large  tavern  bill  and 
mix  without  fear  in  a  drunken  squabble,  yet  I  went  on 
with  a  high  hand  in  my  geometry.' 

The  glimpses  we  have  of  Burns  during  his  stay  here 
are  all  characteristic  of  the  man.  We  see  a  young  man 
looking  out  on  a  world  that  is  new  to  him ;  moving  in  a 
society  to  which  he  had  hitherto  been  a  stranger.  His 
eyes  are  opened  not  only  to  the  knowledge  of  mankind, 
but  to  a  better  knowledge  of  himself.  Thirsting  for  infor- 
mation and  power,  we  find  him  walking  with  Willie  Niven, 
his  companion  from  Maybole,  away  from  the  village  to 
where  they  might  have  peace  and  quiet,  and  converse 
on  subjects  calculated  to  improve  their  minds.  They 
sharpen  their  wits  in  debate,  taking  sides  on  speculative 
questions,  and  arguing  the  matter  to  their  own  satisfaction. 
No  doubt  in  these  conversations  and  debates  he  was 
developing  that  gift  of  clear  reasoning  and  lucid  expres- 
sion which  afterwards  so  confounded  the  literary  and 
legal  luminaries  of  Edinburgh.  They  had  made  a  study 
of  logic,  but  here  was  a  man  from  the  plough  who  held 
his  own  with  them,  discussing  questions  which  in  their 
opinion  demanded  a  special  training.  For  an  uncouth 
country  ploughman  gifted  with  song  they  were  prepared, 


ROBERT  BURNS  29 

but  they  did  not  expect  one  who  could  meet  them  in 
conversation  with  the  fence  and  foil  of  a  skilled  logician. 
We  may  see  also  his  burning  desire  for  distinction  in  that 
scene  in  school  when  he  led  the  self-confident  school- 
master into  debate  and  left  him  humiliated  in  the  eyes 
of  the  pupils.  Even  in  his  contests  with  John  Niven 
there  was  the  same  eagerness  to  excel.  When  he  could 
not  beat  him  in  wrestling  or  putting  the  stone,  he  was 
fain  to  content  himself  with  a  display  of  his  superiority  in 
mental  calisthenics.  The  very  fact  that  a  charming 
fillette  overset  his  trigonometry,  and  set  him  off  at  a 
tangent,  is  a  characteristic  ending  to  this  summer  of 
study.  Peggy  Thomson  in  her  kail-yard  was  too  much 
for  the  fiery  imagination  of  a  poet :  c  it  was  in  vain  to 
think  of  doing  more  good  at  school.' 

Too  much  stress  is  not  to  be  laid  on  Burns's  own 
mention  of  '  scenes  of  swaggering  riot  and  dissipation ' 
at  Kirkoswald.  Such  things  were  new  to  him,  and 
made  a  lasting  impression  on  his  mind.  We  know  that 
he  returned  home  very  considerably  improved.  His 
reading  was  enlarged  with  the  very  important  addition 
of  Thomson's  and  Shenstone's  works.  He  had  seen 
human  nature  in  a  new  phasis,  and  now  he  engaged  in 
literary  correspondence  with  several  of  his  schoolfellows. 

It  was  not  long  after  his  return  from  Kirkoswald  that 
the  Bachelor's  Club  was  founded,  and  here  could  Burns 
again  exercise  his  debating  powers  and  find  play  for  his 
expanding  intellect.  The  members  met  to  forget  their 
cares  in  mirth  and  diversion,  '  without  transgressing  the 
bounds  of  innocent  decorum ' ;  and  the  chief  diversion 
appears  to  have  been  debate. 

If  we  are  to  believe  Gilbert,  the  seven  years  of  their 


30  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

stay  in  Tarbolton  parish  were  not  marked  by  much 
literary  improvement  in  Robert.  That  may  well  have 
been  Gilbert's  opinion  at  the  time;  for  the  poet  was 
working  hard  on  the  farm,  and  often  spending  an  evening 
at  Tarbolton  or  at  one  or  other  of  the  neighbouring  farms. 
But  he  managed  all  the  same  to  get  through  a  consider- 
able amount  of  reading ;  and  though,  perhaps,  he  did 
not  devote  himself  so  sedulously  to  books  as  he  had  been 
accustomed  to  do  in  the  seclusion  of  Mount  Oliphant,  he 
was  storing  his  mind  in  other  ways.  His  keen  observa- 
tion was  at  work,  and  he  was  studying  what  was  of  more 
interest  and  importance  to  him  than  books — 'men,  their 
manners  and  their  ways.'  '  I  seem  to  be  one  sent  into 
the  world,'  he  remarks  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Murdoch,  'to 
see  and  observe ;  and  I  very  easily  compound  with  the 
knave  who  tricks  me  of  my  money,  if  there  be  anything 
original  about  him,  which  shows  me  human  nature  in  a 
different  light  from  anything  I  have  seen  before.'  Partly  it 
was  this  passion  to  see  and  observe,  partly  it  was  another 
passion  that  made  him  the  assisting  confidant  of  most  of 
the  country  lads  in  their  amours.  'I  had  a  curiosity,  zeal, 
and  intrepid  dexterity  in  these  matters  which  recom- 
mended me  as  a  proper  second  in  duels  of  that  kind.' 
His  song,  My  Nannie^  O,  which  belongs  to  this  period,  is 
not  only  true  as  a  lyric  of  sweet  and  simple  love,  but  is  also 
true  to  the  particular  style  of  love-making  then  in  vogue. 

'The  westlin  wind  blaws  loud  an'  shill; 

The  night's  baith  mirk  and  rainy,  O  : 
But  I'll  get  my  plaid,  an'  out  I'll  steal, 
An'  owre  the  hills  to  Nannie,  O.' 

According  to  Gilbert,  the  poet  himself  was  constantly 
the  victim  of  some  fair  enslaver,  although,  being  jealous 


ROBERT  BURNS  31 

of  those  richer  than  himself,  he  was  not  aspiring  in  his 
loves.  But  while  there  was  hardly  a  comely  maiden  in 
Tarbolton  to  whom  he  did  not  address  a  song,  we  are  not 
to  imagine  that  he  was  frittering  his  heart  away  amongst 
them  all.  A  poet  may  sing  lyrics  of  love  to  many  while 
his  heart  is  true  to  one.  The  one  at  this  time  to  Robert 
Burns  was  Ellison  Begbie,  to  whom  some  of  his  songs 
are  addressed — notably  Mary  Morrison,  one  of  the 
purest  and  most  beautiful  love  lyrics  ever  poet  penned. 
Nothing  is  more  striking  than  the  immense  distance 
between  this  composition  and  any  he  had  previously 
written.  In  this  song  he  for  the  first  time  stepped  to 
the  front  rank  as  a  song-writer,  and  gave  proof  to  himself, 
if  to  nobody  else  at  the  time,  of  the  genius  that  was  in 
him.  A  few  letters  to  Ellison  Begbie  are  also  preserved, 
pure  and  honourable  in  sentiment,  but  somewhat  artificial 
and  formal  in  expression.  It  was  because  of  his  love 
for  her,  and  his  desire  to  be  settled  in  life,  that  he  took  to 
the  unfortunate  flax-dressing  business  in  Irvine.  That 
is  something  of  an  unlovely  and  mysterious  episode  in 
Burns's  life.  Suffice  it  to  say  in  his  own  words :  ' This 
turned  out  a  sadly  unlucky  affair.  My  partner  was  a 
scoundrel  of  the  first  water,  and,  to  finish  the  whole 
business,  while  we  were  giving  a  welcome  carousal  to  the 
New  Year,  our  shop,  by  the  drunken  carelessness  of  my 
partner's  wife,  took  fire  and  burned  to  ashes,  and  I  was 
left,  like  a  true  poet,  not  worth  a  sixpence." 

His  stay  at  Irvine  was  neither  pleasant  for  him  at  the 
time  nor  happy  in  its  results.  He  met  there  'acquaint- 
ances of  a  freer  manner  of  thinking  and  living  than  he 
had  been  used  to ' ;  and  it  needs  something  more  than 
the  family  misfortunes  and  the  deathbed  of  his  father  to 


32  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

account  for  that  terrible  fit  of  hypochondria  when  he 
returned  to  Lochlea.  'For  three  months  I  was  in  a 
diseased  state  of  body  and  mind,  scarcely  to  be  envied 
by  the  hopeless  wretches  who  have  just  got  their  sentence, 
Depart  from  met  ye  cursed* 

Up  to  this  time,  the  twenty-fifth  year  of  his  age,  Burns 
had  not  written  much.  Besides  Mary  Morrison  might 
be  mentioned  The  Death  and  Dying  Words  of  Poor 
Mailie^  and  another  bewitching  song,  The  Rigs  o'  Barley ', 
which  is  surely  an  expression  of  the  innocent  abandon, 
the  delicious  rapture  of  pure  and  trustful  love.  But 
what  he  had  written  was  work  of  promise,  while  at  least 
one  or  two  of  his  songs  had  the  artistic  finish  as  well  as 
the  spontaneity  of  genuine  poetry.  In  all  that  he  had 
done,  c  puerile  and  silly,'  to  quote  his  own  criticism  of 
Handsome  Nell,  or  at  times  halting  and  crude,  there  was 
the  ring  of  sincerity.  He  was  not  merely  an  echo,  as  too 
many  polished  poetasters  in  their  first  attempts  have  been. 
Such  jinglers  are  usually  as  happy  in  their  juvenile 
effusions  as  in  their  later  efforts.  But  Burns  from  the 
first  tried  to  express  what  was  in  him,  what  he  himself 
felt,  and  in  so  far  had  set  his  feet  on  the  road  to  perfec- 
tion. Being  natural,  he  was  bound  to  improve  by  practice, 
and  if  there  was  genius  in  him  to  become  in  time  a  great 
poet.  That  he  was  already  conscious  of  his  powers  we 
know,  and  the  longing  for  fame,  'that  last  infirmity  of  noble 
mind,'  was  strong  in  him  and  continually  growing  stronger. 

'Then  out  into  the  world  my  course  I  did  determine, 
Though  to  be  rich  was  not  my  wish,  yet  to  be  great  was 

charming ; 

My  talents  they  were  not  the  worst,  nor  yet  my  education; 
Resolved  was  I  at  least  to  try  to  mend  my  situation.' 


ROBERT  BURNS  33 

Before  this  he  had  thought  of  more  ambitious  things 
than  songs,  and  had  sketched  the  outlines  of  a  tragedy ; 
but  it  was  only  after  meeting  with  Fergusson's  Scotch 
Poems  that  he  'struck  his  wildly  resounding  lyre  with 
rustic  vigour.'  In  his  commonplace  book,  begun  in  1783, 
we  have  ever-recurring  hints  of  his  devoting  himself  to 
poetry.  '  For  my  own  part  I  never  had  the  least 
thought  or  inclination  of  turning  poet  till  I  got  once 
heartily  in  love,  and  then  Rhyme  and  Song  were  in  a 
measure  the  spontaneous  language  of  my  heart.' 

The  story  of  Wallace  from  the  poem  by  Blind  Harry 
had  years  before  fired  his  imagination,  and  his  heart 
had  glowed  with  a  wish  to  make  a  song  on  that  hero  in 
some  measure  equal  to  his  merits. 

c  E'en  then,  a  wish,  I  mind  its  power — 
A  wish  that  to  my  latest  hour 

Shall  strongly  heave  my  breast — 
That  I,  for  poor  auld  Scotland's  sake, 
Some  usefu'  plan  or  beuk  could  make, 

Or  sing  a  sang  at  least.' 

This  was  written  afterwards,  but   it  is  retrospective  of 
the  years  of  his  dawning  ambition. 

For  a  time,  however,  all  dreams  of  greatness  are  to 
be  set  aside  as  vain.  The  family  had  again  fallen  on 
evil  days,  and  when  the  father  died,  his  all  went  *  among 
the  hell-hounds  that  grovel  in  the  kennel  of  justice.' 
This  was  no  time  for  poetry,  and  Robert  was  too  much 
of  a  man  to  think  merely  of  his  own  aims  and  ambitions 
in  such  a  crisis.  It  was  only  by  ranking  as  creditors  to 
their  father's  estate  for  arrears  of  wages  that  the  children 
of  William  Burness  made  a  shift  to  scrape  together  a 
little  money,  with  which  Robert  and  Gilbert  were  able  to 
3 


34  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

stock  the  neighbouring  farm  of  Mossgiel.  Thither  the 
family  removed  in  March  1784;  and  it  is  on  this  farm 
that  the  life  of  the  poet  becomes  most  deeply  interesting. 
The  remains  of  the  father  were  buried  in  Alloway  Kirk- 
yard  ;  and  on  a  small  tombstone  over  the  grave  the  poet 
bears  record  to  the  blameless  life  of  the  loving  husband, 
the  tender  father,  and  the  friend  of  man.  He  had 
lived  long  enough  to  hear  some  of  his  son's  poems,  and 
to  express  admiration  for  their  beauty ;  but  he  had  also 
noted  the  passionate  nature  of  his  first-born.  There 
was  one  of  his  family,  he  said  on  his  deathbed,  for 
whose  future  he  feared ;  and  Robert  knew  who  that  one 
was.  He  turned  to  the  window,  the  tears  streaming 
down  his  cheeks. 

Mossgiel,  to  which  the  brothers  now  removed,  taking 
with  them  their  widowed  mother,  was  a  farm  of  about 
one  hundred  and  eighteen  acres  of  cold  clayey  soil, 
close  to  the  village  of  Mauchline.  The  farm-house, 
having  been  originally  the  country  house  of  their  land- 
lord, Mr.  Gavin  Hamilton,  was  more  commodious  and 
comfortable  than  the  home  they  had  left.  Here  the 
brothers  settled  down,  determined  to  do  all  in  their 
power  to  succeed.  They  made  a  fresh  start  in  life, 
and  if  hard  work  and  rigid  economy  could  have  com- 
pelled success,  they  might  now  have  looked  to  the 
future  with  an  assurance  of  comparative  prosperity. 
Mr.  Gavin  Hamilton  was  a  kind  and  generous  land- 
lord, and  the  rent  was  only  £go  a  year ;  considerably 
lower  than  they  had  paid  at  Lochlea. 

But  misfortune  seemed  to  pursue  this  family,  and  ruin 
to  wait  on  their  every  undertaking.  Burns  says :  '  I 
entered  on  this  farm  with  a  full  resolution,  "  Come,  go 


ROBERT  BURNS  35 

to,  I  will  be  wise."  I  read  farming  books ;  I  calculated 
crops;  I  attended  markets;  and,  in  short,  in  spite  of 
the  devil,  the  world,  and  the  flesh,  I  should  have  been 
a  wise  man;  but  the  first  year,  from  unfortunately 
buying  in  bad  seed ;  the  second  from  a  late  harvest,  we 
lost  half  of  both  our  crops.  This  overset  all  my  wisdom, 
and  I  returned  like  the  dog  to  his  vomit,  and  the  sow 
that  was  washed  to  her  wallowing  in  the  mire.' 

That  this  resolution  was  not  just  taken  in  a  repentant 
mood  merely  to  be  forgotten  again  in  a  month's  time, 
Gilbert  bears  convincing  testimony.  'My  brother's 
allowance  and  mine  was  £*]  per  annum  each,  and 
during  the  whole  time  this  family  concern  lasted,  which 
was  four  years,  as  well  as  during  the  preceding  period 
at  Lochlea,  his  expenses  never  in  any  one  year  exceeded 
his  slender  income.  His  temperance  and  frugality  were 
everything  that  could  be  wished.' 

Honest,  however,  as  Burns's  resolution  was,  it  was 
not  to  be  expected  that  he  would — or,  indeed,  could — 
give  up  the  practice  of  poetry,  or  cease  to  indulge  in 
dreams  of  after-greatness.  Poetry,  as  he  has  already 
told  us,  had  become  the  spontaneous  expression  of  his 
heart.  It  was  his  natural  speech.  His  thoughts 
appeared  almost  to  demand  poetry  as  their  proper 
vehicle  of  expression,  and  rhythmed  into  verse  as 
inevitably  as  in  chemistry  certain  solutions  solidify 
in  crystals.  Besides  this,  Burns  was  conscious  of  his 
abilities.  He  had  measured  himself  with  his  fellows, 
and  knew  his  superiority.  More  than  likely  he  had 
been  measuring  himself  with  the  writers  he  had  studied, 
and  found  himself  not  inferior.  The  great  misfortune 
of  his  life,  as  he  confessed  himself,  was  never  to  have 


36  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

an  aim.  He  had  felt  early  some  stirrings  of  ambition, 
but  they  were  like  gropings  of  Homer's  Cyclops  round 
the  walls  of  his  cave.  Now,  however,  we  have  come 
to  a  period  of  his  life  when  he  certainly  did  have  an 
aim,  but  necessity  compelled  him  to  renounce  it  as 
soon  as  it  was  recognised.  It  was  not  a  question  of 
ploughing  or  poetry.  There  was  no  alternative.  How- 
ever insidiously  inclination  might  whisper  of  poetry, 
duty's  voice  called  him  to  the  fields,  and  that  voice  he 
determined  to  obey.  Reading  farming  books  and 
calculating  crops  is  not  a  likely  road  to  perfection  in 
poetry.  Yet,  in  spite  of  all  noble  resolution,  the  voice 
of  Poesy  was  sweet,  and  he  could  not  shut  his  ears  to  it. 
He  might  sing  a  song  to  himself,  even  though  it  were 
but  to  cheer  him  after  the  labours  of  the  day,  and  he 
sang  of  love  in  '  the  genuine  language  of  his  heart.' 

'  There's  nought  but  care  on  every  hand, 

In  every  hour  that  passes,  O: 
What  signifies  the  life  o'  man, 
An'  'twere  na  for  the  lasses,  O?' 

For  song  must  come  in  spite  of  him.  The  caged 
lark  sings,  though  its  field  be  but  a  withered  sod,  and  the 
sky  above  it  a  square  foot  of  green  baize.  Nor  was  his 
commonplace  book  neglected ;  and  in  August  we  come 
upon  an  entry  which  shows  that  poetical  aspirations  were 
again  possessing  him  ;  this  time  not  to  be  cast  forth, 
either  at  the  timorous  voice  of  Prudence  or  the  im- 
portunate bidding  of  Poverty.  Burns  has  calmly  and 
critically  taken  stock  —  so  to  speak  —  of  his  literary 
aptitudes  and  abilities,  and  recognised  his  fitness  for  a 
place  in  the  ranks  of  Scotland's  poets.  '  However  I  am 
pleased  with  the  works  of  our  Scotch  poets,  particularly 
the  excellent  Ramsay,  and  the  still  more  excellent 


ROBERT  BURNS  37 

Fergusson,  yet  I  am  hurt  to  see  other  places  of 
Scotland,  their  towns,  rivers,  woods,  haughs,  etc.,  im- 
mortalised in  such  celebrated  performances,  whilst  my 
dear  native  country,  the  ancient  Bailieries  of  Carrick, 
Kyle,  and  Cunningham,  famous  both  in  ancient  and 
modern  times  for  a  gallant  and  warlike  race  of  inhabit- 
ants; a  country  where  civil  and  particularly  religious 
liberty  have  ever  found  their  first  support  and  their 
last  asylum,  a  country  the  birthplace  of  many  famous 
philosophers,  soldiers,  and  statesmen,  and  the  scene  of 
many  important  events  in  Scottish  history,  particularly  a 
great  many  of  the  actions  of  the  glorious  Wallace,  the 
saviour  of  his  country;  yet  we  have  never  had  one 
Scottish  poet  of  any  eminence  to  make  the  fertile  banks 
of  Irvine,  the  romantic  woodlands  and  sequestered 
scenes  of  Aire,  and  the  heathy  mountainous  source  and 
winding  sweep  of  Doon,  emulate  Tay,  Forth,  Ettrick, 
Tweed,  etc.  This  is  a  complaint  I  would  gladly  remedy ; 
but,  alas !  I  am  far  unequal  to  the  task,  both  in  native 
genius  and  education.  Obscure  I  am,  and  obscure  I 
must  be,  though  no  young  poet  nor  young  soldier's 
heart  ever  beat  more  fondly  for  fame  than  mine.'  The 
same  thoughts  and  aspirations  are  echoed  later  in  his 
Epistle  to  William  Simpson — 

'  Ramsay  and  famous  Fergusson 
Gied  Forth  and  Tay  a  lift  aboon ; 
Yarrow  and  Tweed,  to  mony  a  tune, 

Owre  Scotland  rings, 
While  Irwin,  Lugar,  Ayr,  and  Doon, 

Naebody  sings. 


We'll  gar  our  streams  and  burnies  shine 
Up  wi'  the  best ! ' 


38  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

The  dread  of  obscurity  spoken  of  here  was  almost  a 
weakness  with  Burns.  We  hear  it  like  an  ever-recurring 
wail  in  his  poems  and  letters.  In  the  very  next  entry 
in  his  commonplace  book,  after  praising  the  old  bards, 
and  drawing  a  parallel  between  their  sources  of  inspira- 
tion and  his  own,  he  shudders  to  think  that  his  fate  may  be 
such  as  theirs.  '  Oh  mortifying  to  a  bard's  vanity,  their 
very  names  are  buried  in  the  wreck  of  things  that  were  !' 

Close  on  the  heels  of  these  entries  came  troubles  on 
the  head  of  the  luckless  poet,  troubles  more  serious 
than  bad  seed  and  late  harvests.  During  the  summer 
of  1784,  we  know  that  he  was  in  bad  health,  and  again 
subject  to  melancholy.  His  verses  at  this  time  are  of  a 
religious  cast,  serious  and  sombre,  the  confession  of 
fault,  and  the  cry  of  repentance. 

1  Thou  know'st  that  Thou  hast  formed  me 

With  passions  wild  and  strong ; 
And  listening  to  their  witching  voice 
Has  often  led  me  wrong.' 

Perhaps  this  is  only  the  prelude  to  his  verses  to 
Rankine,  written  towards  the  close  of  the  year,  and  his 
poem,  A  Poefs  Welcome.  They  must  at  least  be  all 
read  together,  if  we  are  to  have  any  clear  conception  of 
the  nature  of  Burns.  It  is  not  enough  to  select  his 
Epistle  to  Rankine,  and  speak  of  its  unbecoming  levity. 
This  was  the  time  when  Burns  was  first  subjected  to 
ecclesiastical  discipline ;  and  some  of  his  biographers 
have  tried  to  trace  the  origin  of  that  wonderful  series  of 
satires,  written  shortly  afterwards,  to  the  vengeful  feelings 
engendered  in  the  poet  by  this  degradation.  But  Burns's 
attack  on  the  effete  and  corrupt  ceremonials  of  the 
Church  was  not  a  burst  of  personal  rancour  and  bitter- 


ROBERT  BURNS  39 

ness.  The  attack  came  of  something  far  deeper  and 
nobler,  and  was  bound  to  be  delivered  sooner  or  later. 
His  own  personal  experience,  and  the  experience  of  his 
worthy  landlord,  Gavin  Hamilton,  may  have  given  the 
occasion,  but  the  cause  of  the  attack  was  in  the  Church 
itself,  and  in  Burns's  inborn  loathing  of  humbug,  hypo- 
crisy, and  cant. 

Well  was  it  the  satires  were  written  by  so  powerful  a 
satirist,  that  the  Church  purged  itself  of  the  evil  thing 
and  cleansed  its  ways.  This,  however,  is  an  episode  of 
such  importance  in  the  life  of  Burns,  and  in  the  religious 
history  of  Scotland,  as  to  require  to  be  taken  up  care- 
fully and  considered  by  itself. 


CHAPTER    III 

THE   SERIES   OF   SATIRES 

BEFORE  we  can  clearly  see  and  understand  Burns's 
attitude  to  the  Church,  we  must  have  studied  the  nature 
of  the  man  himself,  and  we  must  know  something  also  of 
his  religious  training.  It  will  not  be  enough  to  select 
his  series  of  satires,  and,  from  a  study  of  them  alone, 
try  to  make  out  the  character  of  the  man.  His  previous 
life  must  be  known  j  the  natural  bent  of  his  mind  ap- 
prehended, and  once  that  is  grasped,  these  satires  will 
appeal  to  the  heart  and  understanding  of  the  reader 
with  a  sense  of  naturalness  and  expectedness.  They  are 
as  inevitable  as  his  love  lyrics,  and  are  read  with  the 
conviction  that  his  merciless  exposure  of  profanity  mas- 
querading in  the  habiliments  of  religion,  was  part  of  the 
life-work  and  mission  of  this  great  poet.  He  had  been 
born,  it  is  recognised,  not  only  to  sing  the  loves  and  joys 
and  sorrows  of  his  fellow  men  and  women,  but  to  purge 
their  lives  of  grossness,  and  their  religion  of  the  filth  of 
hypocrisy  and  cant.  Let  it  be  admitted,  that  he  himself 
went '  a  kennin  wrang.'  What  argument  is  there  ?  We 
do  not  deny  the  divine  mission  of  Samson  because  of 
Delilah.  Surely  that  giant's  life  was  a  wasted  one,  yet 
in  his  very  death  he  was  true  to  his  mission,  and  ful- 
filled the  purpose  of  his  birth.  In  other  lands  and  in 

40 


ROBERT  BURNS  41 

other  times  the  satirist  is  recognised  and  his  work  ap- 
praised ;  the  abuses  he  scourged,  the  pretensions  he 
ridiculed,  are  seen  in  all  their  hideousness ;  but  when  a 
great  satirist  arises  amongst  ourselves  to  probe  the  ulcers 
of  pharisaism,  he  is  banned  as  a  profaner  of  holy  things, 
touching  with  impious  hands  the  ark  of  the  covenant. 
Why  should  the  doth — as  it  is  so  ingenuously  called — 
be  touched  with  delicate  hands,  unless  it  be  that  it  is 
shoddy?  Yet  the  man  who  would  stand  well  in  the 
eyes  of  society  must  not  whisper  a  word  against  pharisa- 
ism ;  for  the  Pharisee  is  a  highly  respectable  person,  and 
observes  the  proprieties ;  he  typifies  the  conventional 
righteousness  and  religion  of  his  time. 

Let  us  have  done  with  all  this  timidity  and  coward 
tenderness.  If  the  Church  is  filthy,  it  must  be  cleansed ; 
if  there  be  money-changers  within  its  gates,  let  them  be 
driven  out  with  a  whip  of  small  cords.  This  awe  of  the 
doth,  not  yet  stamped  out  in  Scotland,  is  but  the  remains 
of  a  pagan  superstition,  and  has  nothing  to  do  with 
the  manliness  and  courage  of  true  religion.  But  pro- 
phets have  no  honour  in  their  own  country,  rarely  in 
their  own  time ;  they  have  ever  been  persecuted,  arid  it 
is  the  Church's  martyrs  that  have  handed  down  through 
the  ages  the  light  of  the  world. 

The  profanities  and  religious  blasphemies  Burns  at- 
tacked were  evils  insidious  and  poisonous,  eating  to  the 
very  heart  of  the  religious  life  of  the  country,  and  they 
required  a  desperate  remedy.  Let  us  be  thankful  that 
the  remedy  was  applied  in  time;  and,  looking  to  the 
righteousness  he  wrought,  let  us  bless  the  name  of 
Burns. 

Burns's  father,  stern  and  severe  moralist  as  he  was, 


42  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

was  not   a  strict   Calvinist.      Anyone   who   takes    the 
trouble  to  read  c  The  Manual  of  Religious  Belief  in  a 
Dialogue  between  Father  and  Son,  compiled  by  William 
Burness,  Farmer,  Mount  Oliphant,  and  transcribed  with 
Grammatical  Corrections  by  John  Murdoch,  Teacher,' 
will  see  that  the  man  was  of  too  loving  and  kindly  a 
nature  to  be   strictly  orthodox.     What  was   rigid  and 
unlovely  to  him  in  the  Calvinism  of  the  Scottish  Church 
of  that  day  has  been  here   softened  down  into  some- 
thing not  very  far  from  Arminianism.     He  had  had  a 
hard  experience  in  the  world  himself,  and  that  may  have 
drawn  him  nearer  to  his  suffering  fellow-men  and  into 
closer  communion  with  his  God.     He  had  learned  that 
religion   is   a  thing  of  the  spirit,  and  not  a  matter  of 
creeds  and  catechisms.     Of  Robert  Burns's  own  religion 
it  would  be  impertinent  to  inquire  too  curiously.     The 
religion  of  a  man  is  not  to  be  paraded  before  the  public 
like  the  manifesto  of  a  party  politician.     After  all,  is 
there  a  single  man  who  can  sincerely,  without  equivoca- 
tion   or    mental    reservation,   label    himself  Calvinist, 
Arminian,   Socinian,   or   Pelagian?      If   there   be,   his 
mind   must   be   a   marvel   of  mathematical  nicety  and 
nothing  more.      All   that   we   need  know  of  Burns  is 
that  he  was  naturally  and  sincerely  religious ;  that  he 
worshipped  an   all-loving   Father,   and  believed  in  an 
ever-present  God ;  that  his  charity  was  boundless ;  that 
he  loved  what  was  good  and  true,  and  hated  with  an 
indignant  hatred  whatever  was   loathsome    and  false. 
He  loved  greatly  his  fellow-creatures,  man  and  beast 
and   flower;  he  could  even  find   something  to  pity  in 
the  fate  of  the  devil  himself.     That  he  was  not  ortho- 
dox, in  the   narrow  interpretation  of  orthodoxy  in  his 


T 


ROBERT  BURNS  43 

day,  we  are  well  enough  aware,  else  had  he  not  been 
the  poet  we  love  and  cherish. 

In  his  early  days  at  Mount  Oliphant  there  is  a  hint 
of  these  later  satires.  *  Polemical  divinity  about  this 
time  was,'  he  says,  'putting  the  country  half-mad,  and 
I,  ambitious  of  shining  on  Sundays,  between  sermons, 
in  conversation  parties,  at  funerals,  etc.,  in  a  few  years 
more,  used  to  puzzle  Calvinism  with  so  much  heat  and 
indiscretion  that  I  raised  a  hue  and  cry  of  heresy  against 
me,  "which  has  not  ceased  to  this  hour.'  And  heresy  is  a 
terrible  cry  to  raise  against  a  man  in  Scotland.  In 
those  days  it  was  Anathema-maranatha  ;  even  now  it  is 
still  the  war-slogan  of  the  Assemblies. 

The  polemical  divinity  which  he  refers  to  as  putting 
the  country  half-mad  was  the  wordy  war  that  was  being 
carried  on  at  that  time  between  the  Auld  Lights  and  the 
New  Lights.  These  New  Lights,  as  they  were  called, 
were  but  a  birth  of  the  social  and  religious  upheaval  that 
was  going  on  in  Scotland  and  elsewhere.  The  spirit  of 
revolution  was  abroad  ;  in  France  it  became  acutely 
political;  in  Scotland  there  was  a  desire  for  greater 
religious  freedom.  The  Church,  as  reformed  by  Knox, 
was  requiring  to  be  re-reformed.  The  yoke  of  papacy 
had  been  lifted  certainly,  but  the  yoke  of  pseudo- 
Protestantism  which  had  taken  its  place  was  quite  as 
heavy  on  the  necks  of  the  people.  So  long  as  it  had 
been  new  ;  so  long  as  it  had  been  of  their  own  choosing, 
it  had  been  endured  willingly.  But  a  generation  was 
springing  up  —  stiff-necked  they  might  have  been  called, 
in  that  they  fretted  under  the  yoke  of  their  fathers  — 
that  sought  to  be  delivered  from  the  tyranny  of  their 
pastors  and  the  fossilised  formalism  of  their  creed.  To 


44  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  people  in  their  bondage  a  prophet  was  born,  and 
that  prophet  was  Robert  Burns. 

It  was  natural  that  a  man  of  Burns's  temperament  and 
clearness  of  perception  should  be  on  the  side  of  the 
'common-sense'  party.  In  one  of  his  letters  to  Mr. 
James  Burness,  Montrose,  wherein  he  describes  the 
strange  doings  of  a  strange  sect  called  the  Buchanites, — 
surely  in  itself  a  convincing  proof  of  the  degeneracy  of 
the  times  in  the  matter  of  religion, — we  have  an  in- 
teresting reflection  which  gives  us  some  insight  into  the 
poet's  mind.  '  This,  my  dear  Sir,  is  one  of  the  many 
instances  of  the  folly  in  leaving  the  guidance  of  sound 
reason  and  common  sense  in  matters  of  religion.  When- 
ever we  neglect  or  despise  those  sacred  monitors,  the 
whimsical  notions  of  a  perturbed  brain  are  taken  for  the 
immediate  influences  of  the  Deity,  and  the  wildest 
fanaticism  and  the  most  inconsistent  absurdities  will 
meet  with  abettors  and  converts.  Nay,  I  have  often 
thought  that  the  more  out  of  the  way  and  ridiculous 
their  fancies  are,  if  once  they  are  sanctified  under  the 
name  of  religion,  the  unhappy,  mistaken  votaries  are  the 
more  firmly  glued  to  them.' 

The  man  who  wrote  that  was  certainly  not  the  man, 
when  the  day  of  battle  came,  to  join  himself  with  the 
orthodox  party,  the  party  that  stuck  to  the  pure,  un- 
diluted Puritanism  of  Covenanting  times.  Yet  many 
biographers  have  not  seen  the  bearing  that  such  a  letter 
has  on  Burns's  attitude  to  the  Church.  Principal  Shairp 
seems  to  say  that  Burns,  had  it  not  been  for  the  acci- 
dent of  ecclesiastical  discipline  to  which  he  had  been 
subjected,  would  have  joined  the  orthodox  party.  The 
notion  is  absurd.  Burns  had  attacked  orthodox  Cal- 


ROBERT  BURNS  45 

vinism  even  in  his  boyhood,  and  was  already  tainted 
with  heresy.  '  These  men,'  the  worthy  Principal  informs 
us,  'were  democratic  in  their  ecclesiastical  views,  and 
stout  protesters  against  patronage.  All  Burns's  instincts 
would  naturally  have  been  on  the  side  of  those  who 
wished  to  resist  patronage  and  "cowe  the  lairds"  had 
not  this,  his  natural  tendency,  been  counteracted  by  a 
stronger  bias  drawing  him  in  an  opposite  direction.' 
This  is  a  narrowing — if  not  even  a  positive  misconcep- 
tion— of  the  case  with  a  vengeance.  The  question  was 
not  of  patronage  at  all,  but  of  moral  and  religious 
freedom;  while  the  democracy  of  those  ministers  was 
a  terribly  one-sided  democracy.  The  lairds  may  have 
dubbed  them  democrats,  but  they  were  aristocratic 
enough,  despotic  even,  to  their  herds.  But  Principal 
Shairp  has  been  led  altogether  wrong  by  imagining  that 
'Burns,  smarting  under  the  strict  church  discipline, 
naturally  threw  himself  into  the  arms  of  the  opposite 
or  New  Light  party,  who  were  more  easy  in  their  life 
and  in  their  doctrine.'  More  charitable  also,  and  Christ- 
like  in  their  judgments,  I  should  fain  hope;  less  blinded 
by  a  superstitious  awe  of  the  Church.  '  Nothing  could 
have  been  more  unfortunate,'  he  continues,  'than  that 
in  this  crisis  of  his  career  he  should  have  fallen  into 
intimacy  with  those  hard-headed  but  coarse-minded 
men.'  Surely  this  zeal  for  the  Church  has  carried  him 
too  far.  Were  these  men  all  coarse  minded  ?  Nobody 
believes  it.  The  coarse-minded  Dr.  Dalrymple  of  Ayr, 
and  the  coarse-minded  Mr.  Lawrie  of  Loudon  !  This  is 
not  argument.  Besides,  it  is  perfectly  gratuitous.  The 
question,  again,  is  not  one  of  men — that  ecclesiastical 
discipline  has  been  an  offence  and  a  stumbling-block — 


46  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

either  coarse  minded  or  otherwise.  It  is  a  question  of  prin- 
ciple, and  Burns  fought  for  it  with  keen-edged  weapons. 
It  would  be  altogether  a  mistake  to  identify  Burns 
with  the  New  Light  party,  or  with  any  other  sect.  He 
was  a  law  unto  himself  in  religion,  and  would  bind  him- 
self by  no  creed.  Because  he  attacked  rigid  orthodoxy 
as  upheld  by  Auld  Light  doctrine,  that  does  not  at  all 
mean  that  he  was  espousing,  through  thick  and  thin,  the 
cause  of  the  New  Light  party.  He  fought  in  his  own 
name,  with  his  own  weapons,  and  for  humanity.  It 
ought  to  be  clearly  understood  that  in  his  series  of 
satires  he  was  not  attacking  the  orthodoxy  of  the  Auld 
Lights  from  the  bulwarks  of  any  other  creed.  His 
criticism  was  altogether  destructive.  From  his  own 
conception  of  a  wise  and  loving  God  he  satirised  what 
he  conceived  to  be  their  irrational  and  inhuman  con- 
ception of  Deity,  whose  attitude  towards  mankind  was 
assuredly  not  that  of  a  father  to  his  children.  Burns's 
God  was  a  God  of  love ;  the  god  they  worshipped  was 
the  creation  of  their  creed,  a  god  of  election.  It  is 
quite  true  that  Burns  made  many  friends  amongst  the 
New  Lights,  but  we  are  certain  he  did  not  hold  by  all 
their  tenets  or  subscribe  to  their  doctrine.  In  the 
Dictionary  of  National  Biography  we  read :  '  Burns 
represented  the  revolt  of  a  virile  and  imaginative 
nature  against  a  system  of  belief  and  practice  which, 
as  he  judged,  had  degenerated  into  mere  bigotry  and 
pharisaism.  .  .  .  That  Burns,  like  Carlyle,  who  at  once 
retained  the  sentiment  and  rejected  the  creed  of  his  race 
more  decidedly  than  Burns,  coulci  sympathise  with  the 
higher  religious  sentiments  of  his  class  is  proved  by  The 
Cotter's  Saturday  Night' 


ROBERT  BURNS  47 

Principal  Shairp,  however,  has  not  seen  the  matter  in 
this  broad  light.  All  he  sees  is  a  man  of  keen  insight 
and  vigorous  powers  of  reasoning,  who  *  has  not  only  his 
own  quarrel  with  the  parish  minister  and  the  stricter 
clergy  to  revenge,  but  the  quarrel  also  of  his  friend  and 
landlord,  Gavin  Hamilton,  a  county  lawyer  who  had 
fallen  under  church  censure  for  neglect  of  church  ordin- 
ances,'— a  question  of  new  potatoes  in  fact, — 'and  had 
been  debarred  from  the  communion.' 

It  is  pleasing  to  see  that  the  academic  spirit  is  not 
always  so  blinding  and  blighting.  Professor  Blackie 
recognises  that  the  abuses  Burns  castigated  were  real 
abuses,  and  admits  that  the  verdict  of  time  has  been  in 
his  favour.  '  In  the  case  of  Holy  Willie  and  The  Holy 
Fair?  he  remarks,  'the  lash  was  wisely  and  effectively 
wielded ' ;  and  on  another  occasion  he  wrote,  c  Though 
a  sensitive  pious  mind  will  naturally  shrink  from  the 
bold  exposure  of  devout  abuses  in  holy  things,  in  The 
Holy  Fair  and  other  similar  satires,  on  a  broad  view  of 
the  matter  we  cannot  but  think  that  the  castigation  was 
reasonable,  and  the  man  who  did  it  showed  an  amount 
of  independence,  frankness,  and  moral  courage  that 
amply  compensates  for  the  rudeness  of  the  assault.' 

Rude,  the  assault  certainly  was  and  overwhelming. 
Augean  stables  are  not  to  be  cleansed  with  a  spray  of 
rose-water. 

Lockhart,  whilst  recognising  the  force  and  keenness 
of  these  satires,  has  regretfully  pointed  out  that  the  very 
things  Burns  satirised  were  part  of  the  same  religious 
system  which  produced  the  scenes  described  in  The 
Cotter's  Saturday  Night.  But  is  this  not  really  the 
explanation  of  the  whole  matter?  It  was  just  because 


48  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Burns  had  seen  the  beauty  of  true  religion  at  home,  that 
he  was  fired  to  fight  to  the  death  what  was  false  and 
rotten.  It  was  the  cause  of  true  religion  that  he 
espoused. 

1  All  hail  religion  !    Maid  divine, 
Pardon  a  muse  so  mean  as  mine, 
Who  in  her  rough  imperfect  line 

Thus  dares  to  name  thee. 
To  stigmatise  false  friends  of  thine 

Can  ne'er  defame  thee.' 

Compare  the  reading  of  the  sacred  page,  when  the 
family  is  gathered  round  the  ingle,  and  '  the  sire  turns 
o'er  with  patriarchal  grace  the  big  ha'-bible '  and  '  wales 
a  portion  with  judicious  care,'  with  the  reading  of 
Peebles  frae  the  Water  fit— 

1  See,  up  he's  got  the  word  o*  God, 
And  meek  and  mini  has  viewed  it.' 

What  a  contrast !  The  two  readings  are  as  far  apart 
as  is  heaven  from  hell,  as  far  as  the  true  from  the 
false.  It  is  strange  that  both  Lockhart  and  Shairp 
should  have  stumbled  on  the  explanation  of  Burns's 
righteous  satire  in  these  poems ;  should  have  been  so 
near  it,  and  yet  have  missed  it.  It  was  just  because 
Burns  could  write  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  that  he 
could  write  The  Holy  Tuhie,  Holy  Willie's  Prayer,  The 
Ordination,  and  The  Holy  Fair.  Had  he  not  felt  the 
beauty  of  that  family  worship  at  home ;  had  he  not  seen 
the  purity  and  holiness  of  true  religion,  how  could  such 
scenes  as  those  described  in  The  Holy  Fair,  or  such 
hypocrisy  as  Holy  Willie's,  ever  have  moved  him  to 
scathing  satire?  Where  was  the  poet's  indignation  to 


ROBERT  BURNS  49 

come  from  ?  That  is  not  to  be  got  by  tricks  of  rhyme 
or  manufactured  by  rules  of  metre ;  but  let  it  be  alive 
and  burning  in  the  heart  of  the  poet,  and  all  else  will 
be  added  unto  him  for  the  perfect  poem,  as  it  was  to 
Burns.  That  Burns,  though  he  wrote  in  humorous 
satire,  was  moved  to  the  writing  by  indignation,  he  tells 
us  in  his  epistle  to  the  Rev.  John  M'Math — 

'But  I  gae  mad  at  their  grimaces, 
Their  sighin',  cantin',  grace-prood  faces, 
Their  three-mile  prayers,  and  half-mile  graces, 

Their  raxin'  conscience, 
Whase  greed,  revenge,  and  pride  disgraces 

Waur  nor  their  nonsense.' 

The  first  of  Burns's  satires,  if  we  except  his  epistle  to 
John  Goudie,  wherein  we  have  a  hint  of  the  acute  differ- 
ences of  the  time,  is  his  poem  The  Twa  Herds,  or 
The  Holy  Tulzie.  The  two  herds  were  the  Rev.  John 
Russell  and  the  Rev.  Alexander  Moodie,  both  afterwards 
mentioned  in  The  Holy  Fair.  These  reverend  gentle- 
men, so  long  sworn  friends,  bound  by  a  common  bond 
of  enmity  against  a  certain  New  Light  minister  of  the 
name  of  Lindsay,  'had  a  bitter  black  outcast,'  and,  in 
the  words  of  Lockhart,  '  abused  each  other  coram  populo 
with  a  fiery  virulence  of  personal  invective  such  as  has 
long  been  banished  from  all  popular  assemblies/  This 
degrading  spectacle  of  two  priests  ordained  to  preach 
the  gospel  of  love,  attacking  each  other  with  all  the 
rancour  of  malice  and  uncharitableness,  and  foaming 
with  the  passion  of  a  pothouse,  was  too  flagrant  an 
occasion  for  satire  for  Burns  to  miss.  He  held  them 
up  to  ridicule  in  The  Holy  Tulziey  and  showed  them 
themselves  as  others  saw  them.  It  has  been  objected 
4 


50  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

by  some  that  Burns  made  use  of  humorous  satire ;  did 
not  censure  with  the  fiery  fervour  of  a  righteous  indig- 
nation. Burns  used  the  weapon  he  could  handle  best ; 
and  a  powerful  weapon  it  is  in  the  hands  of  a  master. 
We  acknowledge  Horace's  satires  to  be  scathing  enough, 
though  they  are  light  and  delicate,  almost  trifling  and 
flippant  at  times.  He  has  not  the  volcanic  utterance  of 
Juvenal,  but  I  doubt  not  his  castigations  were  quite  as 
effective.  *  Quamquam  ridentem  dicere  verum  quid 
vetat?'  Burns  might  have  well  replied  to  his  censors 
with  the  same  question.  Quick  on  the  heels  of  this 
poem  came  Holy  Willie's  Prayer^  wherein  he  took  up 
the  cudgels  for  his  friend,  Mr.  Gavin  Hamilton,  and 
fought  for  him  in  his  own  enthusiastic  way.  The  satire 
here  is  so  scathing  and  scarifying  that  we  can  only  read 
and  wonder,  shuddering  the  while  for  the  wretched 
creature  so  pitilessly  flayed.  Not  a  word  is  wasted; 
not  a  line  without  weight.  The  character  of  the  self- 
righteous,  sensual,  spiteful  Pharisee  is  a  merciless  ex- 
posure, and,  hardest  of  all,  the  picture  is  convincing. 
For  Burns  believed  in  his  own  mind  that  these  men, 
Holy  Willie  and  the  crew  he  typified,  were  thoroughly 
dishonest.  They  were  not  in  his  judgment — and  Burns 
had  keen  insight — mere  bigots  dehumanised  by  their 
creed,  but  a  pack  of  scheming,  calculating  scoundrels. 

'They  take  religion  in  their  mouth, 
They  talk  o*  mercy,  grace,  and  truth, 
For  what?  to  gie  their  malice  skouth 

On  some  puir  wight, 
And  hunt  him  down,  o'er  right  and  ruth 

To  ruin  straight.' 

But  it  must  be  noted  in  Holy  Willie  that  the  poet  is 


ROBERT  BURNS  51 

not  letting  himself  out  in  a  burst  of  personal  spleen. 
He  is  again  girding  at  the  rigidity  of  a  lopped  and 
maimed  Calvinism,  and  attacking  the  creed  through  the 
man.  The  poem  is  a  living  presentment  of  the  undiluted, 
puritanic  doctrine  of  the  Auld  Light  party,  to  whom 
Calvinism  meant  only  a  belief  in  hell  and  an  assurance 
of  their  own  election.  It  is  evident  that  Burns  was  not 
sound  on  either  essential.  The  Address  to  the  Unco 
Guid  is  a  natural  sequel  to  this  poem,  and,  in  a  sense, 
its  culmination.  There  is  the  same  strength  of  satire, 
but  now  it  is  more  delicate  and  the  language  more 
dignified.  There  is  the  same  condemnation  of  phari- 
saism ;  but  the  poem  rises  to  a  higher  level  in  its  appeal 
for  charitable  views  of  human  frailty,  and  its  kindly 
counsel  to  silence ;  judgment  is  to  be  left  to  Him  who 

'Knows  each  cord,  its  various  tone, 
Each  spring  its  various  bias.' 

Of  all  the  series  of  satires,  however,  The  Holy  Fair  is 
the  most  remarkable.  It  is  in  a  sense  a  summing  up  of 
all  the  others  that  preceded  it.  The  picture  it  gives  of 
the  mixed  and  motley  multitude  fairing  in  the  church- 
yard at  Mauchline,  with  a  relay  of  ministerial  mounte- 
banks catering  for  their  excitement,  is  true  to  the  life. 
It  is  begging  the  question  to  deplore  that  Burns  was 
provoked  to  such  an  attack.  The  scene  was  provocation 
sufficient  to  any  right-thinking  man  who  associated  the 
name  of  religion  with  all  that  was  good  and  beautiful 
and  true.  Such  a  state  of  things  demanded  reformation. 
The  churchyard — that  holy  ground  on  which  the  church 
was  built  and  sanctified  by  the  dust  of  pious  and  saintly 
men — cried  aloud  against  the  desecration  to  which  it 


52  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

was  subjected ;  and  Burns,  who  alone  had  the  power  to 
purify  it  from  such  profanities,  would  have  been  untrue 
to  himself  and  a  traitor  to  the  religion  of  his  country 
had  he  merely  shrugged  his  shoulders  and  allowed  things 
to  go  on  as  they  were  going.  And  after  all  what  was  the 
result  ?  For  the  poem  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  end  it 
achieved.  '  There  is  a  general  feeling  in  Ayrshire,'  says 
Chambers,  *  that  The  Holy  Fair  was  attended  with  a  good 
effect  j  for  since  its  appearance  the  custom  of  resorting 
to  the  occasion  in  neighbouring  parishes  for  the  sake  of 
holiday-making  has  been  much  abated  and  a  great  in- 
crease of  decorous  observance  has  taken  place.'  To  that 
nothing  more  need  be  added. 

In  this  series  of  satires  The  Address  to  the  Deil  ought 
also  to  be  included.  Burns  had  no  belief  at  all  in  that 
Frankenstein  creation.  It  was  too  bad,  he  thought,  to 
invent  such  a  monster  for  the  express  purpose  of  im- 
puting to  him  all  the  wickedness  of  the  world.  If  such 
a  creature  existed,  he  was  rather  sorry  for  the  maligned 
character,  and  inclined  to  think  that  there  might  be 
mercy  even  for  him. 

1  I'm  wae  to  think  upon  yon  den, 
Even  for  your  sake.' 

Speaking  of  this  address,  Auguste  Angellier  says  :  '  All 
at  once  in  their  homely  speech  they  heard  the  devil 
addressed  not  only  without  awe,  but  with  a  spice  of 
good-fellowship  and  friendly  familiarity.  They  had 
never  heard  the  devil  spoken  of  in  this  tone  before.  It 
was  a  charming  address,  jocund,  full  of  raillery  and  good- 
humour,  with  a  dash  of  friendliness,  as  if  the  two  speakers 
had  been  cronies  and  companions  ready  to  jog  along 


ROBERT  BURNS  53 

arm  in  arm  to  the  nether  regions.  He  simply  laughs 
Satan  out  of  countenance,  turns  him  to  ridicule,  pokes 
his  fun  at  him,  scolds  and  defies  him  just  as  he  might 
have  treated  a  person  from  whom  he  had  nothing  to 
fear.  Nor  is  that  all.  He  must  admonish  him,  tell  him 
he  has  been  naughty  long  enough,  and  wind  up  by 
giving  him  some  good  advice,  counselling  him  to  mend 
his  ways.  This  was  certainly  without  theological  pre- 
cedent. It  was,  however,  a  simple  idea  which  would 
have  arranged  matters  splendidly.  .  .  .  Even  to-day  to 
speak  well  of  the  devil  is  an  abomination  almost  as 
serious  as  to  speak  evil  of  the  Deity.  There  was 
assuredly  a  great  fortitude  of  mind  as  well  as  daring  of 
conduct  to  write  such  a  piece  as  this.' 

The  poem  has  done  more  than  anything  else  to  kill 
the  devil  of  superstition  in  Scotland.  After  his  death 
he  found,  it  is  averred,  a  quiet  resting-place  in  Kirkcaldy, 
where  pious  people  have  built  a  church  on  his  grave. 

When  Burns  later  in  life  made  the  witches  and  war- 
locks dance  to  the  piping  of  the  devil  in  Alloway's  auld 
haunted  kirk,  he  was  but  assembling  them  in  their  fit 
and  proper  house  of  meeting.  Here  had  they  been 
called  into  being ;  here  had  they  the  still-born  children 
of  superstition  been  thrashed  into  life  and  trained  in 
unholiness.  One  can  imagine  them  oozing  out  from  the 
walls  that  had  echoed  their  names  so  often  through 
centuries  of  Sabbath  days.  The  devil  himself,  by  virtue 
of  his  rank,  takes  his  place  in  the  east,  rising  we  have  no 
doubt  from  the  very  spot  on  which  the  pulpit  once  had 
stood.  In  the  church  had  superstition  exorcised  this 
hellish  legion  out  of  the  dead  mass  of  ignorance  into  the 
swarming  maggots  that  batten  on  corruption ;  and  it  was 


54  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

in  accordance  with  the  eternal  fitness  of  things  that  here 
their  spirits  should  abide,  and,  when  they  took  bodily 
shape,  that  they  should  assume  the  form  and  feature  in 
which  their  mother  Superstition  had  conceived  them. 

Upon  the  holy  table  too  lay  *  twa  span-lang  wee  un- 
christened  bairns.'  For  this  hell  the  poet  pictures  is  the 
creation  of  a  creed  that  throngs  it  with  the  souls  of 
innocent  babes.  'Suffer  little  children  to  come  unto 
me,'  Christ  had  said;  'for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.'  'But  unbaptized  children  must  come  unto 
me,'  the  devil  of  superstition  said;  'for  of  such  is  the 
kingdom  of  hell.' 

What  pathos  is  in  this  line  of  Burns !  There  is  in  its 
slow  spondaic  movement  an  eternity  of  tears.  Could 
satire  or  sermon  have  shown  more  forcibly  the  revolting 
inhumanity  of  a  doctrine  upheld  as  divine  ?  Yet  were 
there  devout  men,  in  other  things  gentle  and  loving  and 
charitable,  who  preached  this  as  the  law  of  a  loving  God. 
With  one  stroke  of  genius  they  were  brought  face  to  face 
with  the  logical  sequence  of  their  barbarous  teaching, 
and  that  without  a  word  of  coarseness  or  a  touch  of 
caricature. 

Only  once  again  did  Burns  return  to  this  attack  on 
bigotry  and  superstition,  and  that  was  when  he  was  in- 
duced to  fight  for  Dr.  Macgill  in  The  Kirk's  Alarm. 
But  he  had  done  his  part  in  the  series  of  satires  of  this 
year  to  expose  the  loathsomeness  of  hypocrisy  and  to 
purge  holy  places  and  the  most  solemn  ceremonies  of 
what  was  blasphemous  and  grossly  profane.  That  in 
this  Burns  was  fulfilling  a  part  of  his  mission  as  a  poet, 
we  can  hardly  doubt;  and  that  his  work  wrought  for 
righteousness,  the  purer  religious  life  that  followed 


ROBERT  BURNS  55 

amply  proves.  The  true  poet  is  also  a  prophet;  and 
Robert  Burns  was  a  prophet  when  he  spoke  forth  boldly 
and  fearlessly  the  truth  that  was  in  him,  and  dared  to 
say  that  sensuality  was  foul  even  in  an  elder  of  the  kirk, 
and  that  profanities  were  abhorred  of  God  even  though 
sanctioned  and  sanctified  under  the  sacred  name  of 
religion. 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    KILMARNOCK   EDITION 

The  Holy  Tulzie  had  been  written  probably  in  April 
1785,  and  the  greatest  of  the  satires,  The  Holy  Fair,  is 
dated  August  of  the  same  year.  It  may,  however,  have 
been  only  drafted,  and  partly  written,  when  the  recent 
celebration  of  the  sacrament  at  Mauchline  was  fresh  in 
the  poet's  mind.  At  the  very  latest,  it  must  have  been 
taken  up,  completed,  and  perfected,  in  the  early  months 
of  1786.  That  is  a  period  of  some  ten  months  between 
the  first  and  the  last  of  this  series  of  satires ;  and  during 
that  time  he  had  composed  Holy  WilliJs  Prayer,  The 
Address  to  the  Deil,  The  Ordination,  and  The  Address  to 
the  Unco  Guid.  But  this  represents  a  very  small  part  of 
the  poetry  written  by  Burns  during  this  busy  period. 
From  the  spring  of  1785  on  to  the  autumn  of  1786  was 
a  time  of  great  productiveness  in  his  life,  a  productiveness 
unparalleled  in  the  life  of  any  other  poet.  If,  according 
to  Gilbert,  the  seven  years  of  their  stay  at  Lochlea  were 
not  marked  by  much  literary  improvement  in  his  brother, 
we  take  it  that  the  poet  had  been  '  lying  fallow '  all  those 
years ;  and  what  a  rich  harvest  do  we  have  now  !  Here, 
indeed,  was  a  reward  worth  waiting  for.  To  read  over 
the  names  of  the  poems,  songs,  and  epistles  written 

within  such  a  short  space  of  time  amazes  us.     And  there 

56 


ROBERT  BURNS  57 

is  hardly  a  poem  in  the  whole  collection  without  a  claim 
to  literary  excellence.  A  month  or  two  previous  to  the 
composition  of  his  first  satire  he  had  written  what  Gilbert 
calls  his  first  poem,  The  Epistle  to  Davie,  '  a  brother  poet, 
lover,  ploughman,  and  fiddler.'  It  is  worthy  of  notice 
that,  in  the  opening  lines  of  this  poem — 

'  While  winds  frae  aff  Ben  Lomond  blaw, 
And  bar  the  doors  wi'  driving  snaw, 
And  hing  us  ower  the  ingle ' — 

we  see  the  poet  and  his  surroundings,  as  he  sets  himself 
down  to  write.  He  plunges,  as  Horace  advises,  in  medias 
res,  and  we  have  the  atmosphere  of  the  poem  in  the  first 
phrase.  This  is  Burns's  usual  way  of  beginning  his 
poems  and  epistles,  as  well  as  a  great  many  of  his  songs. 
The  metre  of  this  poem  Burns  has  evidently  taken  from 
The  Cherry  and  the  S/ae,  by  Alexander  Montgomery, 
which  he  must  have  read  in  Ramsay's  Evergreen.  The 
stanza  is  rather  complicated,  although  Burns,  with  his 
extraordinary  command  and  pliancy  of  language,  uses  it 
from  the  first  with  masterly  ease.  But  there  is  much 
more  than  mere  jugglery  of  words  in  the  poem.  Indeed, 
such  is  this  poet's  seeming  simplicity  of  speech  that  his 
masterly  manipulation  of  metres  always  comes  as  an 
afterthought.  It  never  disturbs  us  in  our  first  reading 
of  the  poem.  Gilbert's  opinion  of  this  poem  is  worth 
recording,  the  more  especially  as  he  expressly  tells  us 
that  the  first  idea  of  Robert's  becoming  an  author  was 
started  on  this  occasion.  'I  thought  it,'  he  says,  'at 
least  equal  to,  if  not  superior,  to  many  of  Allan  Ramsay's 
epistles,  and  that  the  merit  of  these  and  much  other 
Scottish  poetry  seemed  to  consist  principally  in  the  knack 


58  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

of  the  expression  ;  but  here  there  was  a  strain  of  interest- 
ing sentiment,  and  the  Scotticism  of  the  language  scarcely 
seemed  affected,  but  appeared  to  be  the  natural  language 
of  the  poet.'  It  startles  us  to  hear  Gilbert  talking  thus 
of  the  Scotticism,  after  having  heard  so  much  of  Robert 
Burns  writing  naturally  in  the  speech  of  his  home  and 
county.  In  this  poem  we  have,  at  least,  the  first  proof 
of  that  graphic  power  in  which  Bums  has  never  been 
excelled,  and  in  it  we  have  the  earliest  mention  of  his 
Bonnie  Jean.  In  his  next  poem,  Death  and  Dr. 
Hornbook^  his  command  of  language  and  artistic  phrasing 
are  more  apparent,  while  pawky  humour  and  genial  satire 
sparkle  and  flash  from  every  line.  The  poem  is  written 
in  that  form  of  verse  which  Burns  has  made  particularly 
his  own.  He  had  become  acquainted  with  it,  it  is  most 
likely,  in  the  writings  of  Fergusson,  Ramsay,  and  Gilbert- 
field,  who  had  used  it  chiefly  for  comic  subjects;  but 
Burns  showed  that,  in  his  hands  at  least,  it  could  be  made 
the  vehicle  of  the  most  pensive  and  tender  feeling.  In 
an  interesting  note  to  the  Centenary  Burns^  edited  by 
Henley  and  Henderson,  it  is  pointed  out  that  '  the  six- 
line  stave  in  rime  couee  built  on  two  rhymes,'  was  used 
by  the  Troubadours  in  their  Chansons  de  Gestes>  and  that 
it  dates  at  the  very  latest  from  the  eleventh  century. 
Burns's  happiest  use  of  it  was  in  those  epistles  which 
about  this  time  he  began  to  dash  off  to  some  of  his  friends ; 
and  it  is  with  these  epistles  that  the  uninterrupted  stream 
of  poetry  of  this  season  may  be  said  properly  to  begin. 
Perhaps  it  was  in  the  use  of  this  stanza  that  Burns  first 
discovered  his  command  of  rhymes  and  his  felicity  of 
phrasing.  Certain  it  is,  that  after  his  first  epistle  to 
Lapraik,  we  have  epistles,  poems,  songs,  satires  flowing 


ROBERT  BURNS  59 

from  his  pen,  uninterrupted  for  a  period,  and  apparently 
with  marvellous  ease.  It  has  to  be  remembered,  too, 
that  he  was  now  inspired  by  the  dream  of  becoming  an 
author — in  print.  When  or  where  or  how,  had  not  been 
determined ;  but  the  idea  was  delightful  all  the  same ;  the 
hope  was  inspiration  itself.  Some  day  his  work  would 
be  published,  and  he  would  be  read  and  talked  about ! 
He  would  have  done  something  for  poor  auld  Scotland's 
sake.  The  one  thing  now  was  to  make  the  book,  and  to 
that  he  set  himself  deliberately.  Poetry  was  at  last  to 
have  its  chance.  Farming  had  been  tried,  with  little 
success.  The  crops  of  1784  had  been  a  failure,  and  this 
year  they  were  hardly  more  promising.  In  these  dis- 
couraging circumstances  the  poet  was  naturally  driven  in 
upon  himself.  His  eyes  were  turned  ad  infra,  and  he 
sought  consolation  in  his  Muse.  He  was  conscious  of 
some  poetical  ability,  and  he  knew  that  his  compositions 
were  not  destitute  of  merit.  Poetry,  too,  was  to  him,  and 
particularly  so  at  this  time,  its  own  exceeding  great  reward. 
He  rhymed  c  for  fun ' ;  and  probably  he  was  finding  in 
the  exercise  that  excitement  his  passionate  nature  craved. 
Herein  was  his  stimulant  after  the  routine  of  farm-work 
— spiritless  work  that  was  little  better  than  slavery,  in- 
cessant and  achieving  nothing.  We  can  imagine  him  in 
those  days  returning  from  the  fields,  '  forjesket,  sair,  with 
weary  legs,'  and  becoming  buoyant  as  soon  as  he  has 
opened  the  drawer  of  that  small  deal  table  in  the  garret. 

'  Leeze  me  on  rhyme  !  it's  aye  a  treasure, 
My  chief,  amaist,  my  only  pleasure ; 
At  hame,  afield,  at  wark  or  leisure, 

The  Muse,  poor  hizzie, 
Though  rough  and  raploch  be  her  measure, 

She's  seldom  lazy/ 


60  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

But,  lazy  or  not,  she  becomes  '  ramfeezled '  with  con- 
stant work,  when  he  vows  if  '  the  thowless  jad  winna  mak 
it  clink,'  to  prose  it, — a  terrible  threat.  For  he  must 
write,  though  it  be  but  to  keep  despondency  at  arm's 
length.  Yet  it  had  become  more  than  a  pleasure  and  a 
recreation  to  him  ;  and  this  he  was  beginning  to  under- 
stand. This,  after  all,  was  his  real  work,  not  the  drudgery 
of  the  fields ;  in  it  he  must  live  his  life,  and  fulfil  his 
mission.  The  more  he  wrote  the  more  he  accustomed 
himself  with  the  idea  of  being  an  author.  He  knew  that 
the  critic-folk,  deep  read  in  books,  might  scoff  at  the  very 
suggestion  of  a  ploughman  turning  poet,  but  he  recog- 
nised also  that  they  might  be  wrong.  It  was  not  by  dint 
of  Greek  that  Parnassus  was  to  be  climbed.  '  Ae  spark 
o'  Nature's  fire  '  was  the  one  thing  needful  for  poetry  that 
was  to  touch  the  heart. 

1  The  star  that  rules  my  luckless  lot, 
Has  fated  me  the  russet  coat, 
And  damned  my  fortune  to  the  groat ; 

But,  in  requit, 

Has  blest  me  with  a  random  shot 
O'  countra  wit. 

This  while  my  notion's  ta'en  a  sklent, 
To  try  my  fate  in  guid,  black  prent  ; 
But  still  the  mair  I'm  that  way  bent, 

Something  cries,  "Hoolie  ! 
I  red  you,  honest  man,  tak  tent  ! 

Ye'll  shaw  your  folly. 

"  There's  ither  poets,  much  your  betters, 
Far  seen  in  Greek,  deep  men  o'  letters, 
Hae  thought  they  had  ensured  their  debtors, 

A'  future  ages  ; 
Now  moths  deform  in  shapeless  tatters 

Their  unknown  pages.'" 


ROBERT  BURNS  61 

The  works  of  such  scholars  enjoyed  of  the  moths  !  There 
is  gentle  satire  here.  They  themselves  had  grubbed  on 
Greek,  and  now  is  Time  avenged. 

It  is  in  his  epistles  that  we  see  Burns  most  vividly 
and  clearly,  the  man  in  all  his  moods.  They  are  just 
such  letters  as  might  be  written  to  intimate  friends 
when  one  is  not  afraid  of  being  himself,  and  can  speak 
freely.  In  sentiment  they  are  candid  and  sincere,  and 
in  language  transparently  unaffected.  Whatever  occurs 
to  him  as  he  writes  goes  down ;  we  have  the  thoughts 
of  his  heart  at  the  time  of  writing,  and  see  the  varying 
expressions  of  his  face  as  he  passes  from  grave  to  gay, 
from  lively  to  severe.  Now  he  is  tender,  now  indignant; 
now  rattling  along  in  good-natured  raillery  without 
broadening  into  burlesque;  now  becoming  serious  and 
pensively  philosophic  without  a  suggestion  of  mawkish 
morality.  For  Burns,  when  he  is  himself,  is  always  an 
artist;  says  his  say,  and  lets  the  moral  take  care  of 
itself;  and  in  his  epistles  he  lets  himself  go  in  a  very 
revelry  of  artistic  abandon.  He  does  not  think  of 
style — that  fetich  of  barren  minds — and  style  comes  to 
him ;  for  style  is  a  coquette  that  flies  the  suppliant 
wooer  to  kiss  the  feet  of  him  who  worships  a  goddess ; 
a  submissive  handmaiden,  a  wayward  and  moody 
mistress.  But  along  with  delicacy  of  diction,  force  and 
felicity  of  expression,  pregnancy  of  phrase  and  pliancy 
of  language,  what  knowledge  there  is  of  men — the 
passions  that  sway,  the  impulses  that  prompt,  the 
motives  that  move  them  to  action.  Clearness  of 
vision  and  accuracy  of  observation  are  evidenced  in 
their  vividness  of  imagery;  naturalness  and  truthful- 
ness— the  first  essential  of  all  good  writing — in  their 


62  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

convincing  sincerity  of  sentiment.  Wit  and  humour, 
play  and  sparkle  of  fancy,  satire  genial  or  scathing,  a 
boundless  love  of  nature  and  all  created  things,  are 
harmoniously  unified  in  the  glowing  imagination  of 
the  poet,  and  welded  into  the  perfect  poem.  Behind 
all  is  the  personality  of  the  writer,  captivating  the 
reader  as  much  by  his  kindliness  and  sympathy  as  by 
his  witchery  of  words.  Others  have  attempted  poetic 
epistles,  but  none  has  touched  familiar  intercourse  to 
such  fine  issues;  none  has  written  with  such  natural 
grace  or  woven  the  warp  and  woof  of  word  and  senti- 
ment so  cunningly  into  the  web  of  poetry  as  Robert 
Burns.  Looseness  of  rhythm  may  be  detected,  excrucia- 
ting rhymes  are  not  awanting,  but  all  are  forgiven  and 
forgotten  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  feast  as  a  whole. 

Besides  the  satires  and  epistles  we  have  during  this 
fertile  period  poems  as  different  in  subject,  sentiment, 
and  treatment  as  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  and 
The  Jolly  Beggars;  Hallowe'en  and  The  Mountain 
Daisy  ;  The  Farmer's  Address  to  his  Auld  Mare  Maggie 
and  The  Twa  Dogs ;  Address  to  a  Mouse,  Man  was 
made  to  Mourn,  The  Vision,  A  Winter's  Night,  and  The 
Epistle  to  a  Young  Friend.  Perhaps  of  all  these  poems 
The  Vision  is  the  most  important.  It  is  an  epoch- 
marking  poem  in  the  poet's  life.  All  that  he  had 
previously  written  had  been  leading  to  this;  the  finer 
the  poem  the  more  surely  was  it  bringing  him  to  this 
composition.  The  time  was  bound  to  come  when  he 
had  to  settle  for  himself  finally  and  firmly  what  his 
work  in  life  was  to  be.  Was  poetry  to  be  merely  a  pastime ; 
a  recreation  after  the  labours  of  the  day  were  done ;  a 
solace  when  harvests  failed  and  ruin  stared  the  family 


ROBERT  BURNS  63 

in  the  face?  That  question  Burns  answered  when  he 
sat  down  by  the  ingle-cheek,  and,  looking  backward, 
mused  on  the  years  of  youth  that  had  been  spent  '  in 
stringing  blethers  up  in  rhyme  for  fools  to  sing.'  He 
saw  what  he  might  have  been ;  he  knew  too  well  what 
he  was  — 'half-mad,  half-fed,  half-sarket.1  Yet  the 
picture  of  what  he  might  have  been  he  dismissed 
lightly,  almost  disdainfully;  for  he  saw  what  he  might 
be  yet — what  he  should  be.  Turning  from  the  toilsome 
past  and  the  unpromising  present,  he  looked  to  the 
future  with  a  manly  assurance  of  better  things.  He 
should  shine  in  his  humble  sphere,  a  rustic  bard; 
his  to 

'  Preserve  the  dignity  of  Man, 

With  soul  erect ; 
And  trust,  the  Universal  Plan 

Will  all  protect.' 

The  poem  is  pitched  on  a  high  key ;  the  keynote  is 
struck  in  the  opening  lines,  and  the  verses  move  to 
the  end  with  stateliness  and  dignity.  It  is  calm,  con- 
templative, with  that  artistic  restraint  that  comes  of 
conscious  power.  Burns  took  himself  seriously,  and 
knew  that  if  he  were  true  to  his  genius  he  would  become 
the  poet  and  prophet  of  his  fellow-men. 

It  is  worth  while  dwelling  a  little  on  this  particular 
poem,  because  it  marks  a  crisis  in  Burns's  life.  At 
this  point  he  shook  himself  free  from  the  tyranny  of  the 
soil.  He  had  considered  all  things,  and  his  resolution 
for  authorship  was  taken.  Some  of  the  other  poems  will 
be  mentioned  afterwards ;  meantime  we  have  to  consider 
another  crisis  in  his  life — some  aspects  of  his  nature  less 
pleasing,  some  episodes  in  his  career  dark  and  unlovely. 


64  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Speaking  of  the  effect  Holy  Willie's  Prayer  had  on 
the  kirk-session,  he  says  that  they  actually  held  three 
meetings  to  see  if  their  holy  artillery  could  be  pointed 
against  profane  rhymers.  *  Unluckily  for  me,'  he  adds, 
'my  idle  wanderings  led  me  on  another  side,  point- 
blank  within  reach  of  their  heaviest  metal.  This  is  the 
unfortunate  story  alluded  to  in  my  printed  poem  The 
Lament.  'Twas  a  shocking  affair,  which  I  cannot  yet 
bear  to  recollect,  and  it  had  very  nearly  given  me  one 
or  two  of  the  principal  qualifications  for  a  place  with 
those  who  have  lost  the  chart  and  mistaken  the  reckon- 
ing of  rationality.' 

Throughout  the  year  1785  Burns  had  been  acquainted 
with  Jean  Armour,  the  daughter  of  a  master  mason  in 
Mauchline.  Her  name,  besides  being  mentioned  in 
his  Epistle  to  Davie,  is  mentioned  in  The  Vision,  and 
we  know  from  a  verse  on  the  six  belles  of  Mauchline 
that  'Armour  was  the  jewel  o'  them  a'.'  From  the 
depressing  cares  and  anxieties  of  that  gloomy  season 
the  poet  had  turned  to  seek  solace  in  song,  but  he  had 
also  found  comfort  and  consolation  in  love. 

'When  heart-corroding  care  and  grief 

Deprive  my  soul  of  rest, 
Her  dear  idea  brings  relief 
And  solace  to  my  breast.' 

Now  in  the  spring  of  1786  Burns  as  a  man  of  honour 
must  acknowledge  Jean  as  his  wife.  The  lovers  had  im- 
prudently anticipated  the  Church's  sanction  to  marriage, 
and  it  was  his  duty,  speaking  in  the  homely  phrase  of 
the  Scottish  peasantry,  to  make  an  honest  woman  of 
his  Bonnie  Jean.  But,  unfortunately,  matters  had  been 
going  from  bad  to  worse  on  the  farm  of  Mossgiel,  and 


ROBERT  BURNS  65 

about  this  time  the  brothers  had  come  to  a  final  decision 
to  quit  the  farm.  Robert,  as  Gilbert  informs  us,  durst 
not  then  engage  with  a  family  in  his  poor,  unsettled 
state,  but  was  anxious  to  shield  his  partner  by  every 
means  in  his  power  from  the  consequences  of  their 
imprudence.  It  was  agreed,  therefore,  between  them, 
that  they  should  make  a  legal  acknowledgment  of 
marriage,  that  he  should  go  to  Jamaica  to  push  his 
fortune,  and  that  she  should  remain  with  her  father  till 
it  should  please  Providence  to  put  the  means  of  support- 
ing a  family  in  his  power.  He  was  willing  even  to 
work  as  a  common  labourer  so  that  he  might  do  his 
duty  by  the  woman  he  had  already  made  his  wife.  But 
Jean's  father,  whatever  were  his  reasons,  would  allow 
her  to  have  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  a  man  like 
Burns.  A  husband  in  Jamaica  was,  in  his  judgment, 
no  husband  at  all.  What  inducement  he  held  out,  or 
what  arguments  he  used,  we  may  not  know,  but  he 
prevailed  on  Jean  to  surrender  to  him  the  paper 
acknowledging  the  irregular  marriage.  This  he  de- 
posited with  Mr.  Aitken  of  Ayr,  who,  as  Burns  heard, 
deleted  the  names,  thus  rendering  the  marriage  null 
and  void.  This  was  the  circumstance,  what  he  regarded 
as  Jean's  desertion,  which  brought  Burns,  as  he  has 
said,  to  the  verge  of  insanity. 

Now  it  was  that  he  finally  resolved  to  leave  the 
country.  It  was  not  the  first  time  he  had  thought  of 
America.  Poverty,  before  this,  had  led  him  to  think  of 
emigrating;  the  success  of  others  who  had  gone  out 
as  settlers  tempted  him  to  try  his  fortune  beyond  the 
seas,  even  though  he  'should  herd  the  buckskin  kye 
in  Virginia.'  Now,  imprudence  as  well  as  poverty  urged 
5 


66  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

him,  while,  wounded  so  sorely  by  the  action  of  the 
Armours  both  in  his  love  and  his  vanity,  he  had  little 
desire  to  remain  at  home.  There  is  no  doubt  that, 
prior  to  the  birth  of  his  twin  children  and  the  publication 
of  his  poems,  he  would  have  quitted  Scotland  with  little 
reluctance.  But  he  was  so  poor  that,  even  after  accept- 
ing a  situation  in  Jamaica,  he  had  not  money  to  pay 
his  passage ;  and  it  was  at  the  suggestion  of  Gavin 
Hamilton  that  he  began  seriously  to  prepare  for  the 
publication  of  his  poems  by  subscription,  in  order  to 
raise  a  sum  sufficient  to  buy  his  banishment.  Accord- 
ingly we  find  him  under  the  date  April  3,  1786,  writing 
to  Mr.  Aitken,  '  My  proposals  for  publishing  I  am  just 
going  to  send  to  press.' 

But  what  a  time  this  was  in  the  poet's  life !  It  was 
a  long  tumult  of  hope  and  despair,  exultation  and 
despondency,  poetry  and  love;  revelry,  rebellion,  and 
remorse.  Everything  was  excitement;  calmness  itself 
a  fever.  Yet  through  it  all  inspiration  was  ever  with 
him,  and  poem  followed  poem  with  miraculous,  one 
might  almost  say,  unnatural  rapidity.  Now  he  is 
apostrophising  Ruin ;  now  he  is  wallowing  in  the  mire 
of  village  scandal;  now  he  is  addressing  a  mountain 
daisy  in  words  of  tenderness  and  purity;  now  he  is 
scarifying  a  garrulous  tailor,  and  ranting  with  an  alien 
flippancy;  now  it  is  Beelzebub  he  addresses,  now  the 
King ;  now  he  is  waxing  eloquent  on  the  virtues  of 
Scotch  whisky,  anon  writing  to  a  young  friend  in  words 
of  wisdom  that  might  well  be  written  on  the  fly-leaf  of 
his  Bible. 

This  was  certainly  a  period  of  ageing  activity  in 
Burns's  life.  It  seemed  as  if  there  had  been  a  con- 


ROBERT  BURNS  67 

spiracy  of  fate  and  circumstance  to  herald  the  birth  of 
his  poems  with  the  wildest  convulsions  of  labour  and 
travail.  The  parish  of  Tarbolton  became  the  stage  of 
a  play  that  had  all  the  makings  of  a  farce  and  all  the 
elements  of  a  tragedy.  There  were  endless  complica- 
tions and  daily  developments,  all  deepening  the  dramatic 
intensity  without  disturbing  the  unity.  We  watch  with 
breathless  interest,  dumbly  wondering  what  the  end  will 
be.  It  is  tragedy,  comedy,  melodrama,  and  burlesque 
all  in  one. 

Driven  almost  to  madness  by  the  faithlessness  of 
Jean  Armour,  he  rends  himself  in  a  whirlwind  of  passion, 
and  seeks  sympathy  and  solace  in  the  love  of  Mary 
Campbell.  What  a  situation  for  a  novelist !  This  is 
just  how  the  story-teller  would  have  made  his  jilted 
hero  act ;  sent  him  with  bleeding  heart  to  seek  consola- 
tion in  a  new  love.  For  novelists  make  a  study  of  the 
vagaries  of  love,  and  know  that  hearts  are  caught  in 
the  rebound. 

Most  of  the  biographers  of  Burns  are  agreed  that 
this  Highland  lassie  was  the  object  of  by  far  the  deepest 
passion  he  ever  knew.  They  may  be  right.  Death 
stepped  in  before  disillusion,  and  she  was  never  other 
than  the  adored  Mary  of  that  rapturous  meeting  when 
the  white  hawthorn-blossom  no  purer  was  than  their 
love.  Thus  was  his  love  for  Mary  Campbell  ever  a 
holy  and  spiritual  devotion.  Auguste  Angellier  says : 
'This  was  the  purest,  the  most  lasting,  and  by  far  the 
noblest  of  his  loves.  Above  all  the  others,  many  of 
which  were  more  passionate,  this  one  stands  out  with 
the  chasteness  of  a  lily.  There  is  a  complete  contrast 
between  his  love  for  Jean  and  his  love  for  Mary.  In 


68  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  one  case  all  the  epithets  are  material;  here  they 
are  all  moral.  The  praises  are  borrowed,  not  from  the 
graces  of  the  body,  but  from  the  features  of  the  soul. 
The  words  which  occur  again  and  again  are  those  of 
honour,  of  purity,  of  goodness.  The  idea  of  seeing  her 
again  some  day  was  never  absent  from  his  mind.  Every 
time  he  thought  of  eternity,  of  a  future  life,  of  reunions 
in  some  unknown  state,  it  was  to  her  that  his  heart 
went  out.  The  love  of  that  second  Sunday  of  May  was 
ever  present  It  was  the  love  which  led  Burns  to  the 
most  elevated  sphere  to  which  he  ever  attained ;  it  was 
the  inspiration  of  his  most  spiritual  efforts.  This  sweet, 
blue-eyed  Highland  lassie  was  his  Beatrice,  and  waved 
to  him  from  the  gates  of  heaven.' 

We  know  little  about  Mary  Campbell  from  the  poet 
himself;  and  though  much  has  been  ferreted  out  about 
her  by  a  host  of  snappers-up  of  unconsidered  trifles, 
this  episode  in  his  life  is  still  involved  in  mystery.  It 
is  pleasant  to  reflect  that  his  reticence  here  has  kept  at 
least  one  love  passage  in  his  life  sacred  and  holy.  Is 
not  mystery  half  the  charm  and  beauty  of  love  ?  Yet, 
in  spite  of  his  silence,  or  probably  because  of  it,  details 
have  been  raked  up  from  time  to  time,  some  grey 
and  colourless  fossil-remains  of  what  was  once  fresh 
and  living  fact.  From  Burns  himself  we  know  that  the 
lovers  took  a  tender  farewell  in  a  sequestered  spot  by 
the  banks  of  the  Ayr,  and  parted  never  to  meet  again. 
All  the  romance  and  tragedy  are  there,  and  what  need 
we  more?  We  are  not  even  certain  as  to  either  the 
place  or  the  date  of  her  death.  Mrs.  Begg,  the  poet's 
sister,  knew  little  or  nothing  about  Mary  Campbell. 
She  remembered,  however,  a  letter  being  handed  in  to 


ROBERT  BURNS  69 

him  after  the  work  of  the  season  was  over.  '  He  went 
to  the  window  to  open  and  read  it,  and  she  was  struck 
by  the  look  of  agony  which  was  the  consequence.  He 
went  out  without  uttering  a  word.'  What  he  felt  he 
expressed  afterwards  in  song — song  that  has  become 
the  language  of  bereaved  and  broken  hearts  for  all 
time.  The  widowed  lover  knows  'the  dear  departed 
shade,'  but  he  may  not  have  heard  of  Mary  Campbell. 

It  was  in  May  that  Burns  and  Highland  Mary  had 
parted ;  in  June  he  wrote  to  a  friend  about  ungrateful 
Armour,  confessing  that  he  still  loved  her  to  distraction, 
though  he  would  not  tell  her  so.  But  all  his  letters 
about  this  time  are  wild  and  rebellious.  He  raves  in 
a  tempest  of  passion,  and  cools  himself  again,  perhaps 
in  the  composition  of  a  song  or  poem.  Just  about  the 
time  this  letter  was  written,  his  poems  were  already  in 
the  press.  His  proposal  for  publishing  had  met  with 
so  hearty  a  reception,  that  success  financially  was  to  a 
certain  extent  assured,  and  the  printing  had  been  put 
into  the  hands  of  John  Wilson,  Kilmarnock.  Even  yet 
his  pen  was  busy.  He  wrote  often  in  a  gay  and  lively 
style,  almost,  it  would  seem,  in  a  struggle  to  keep 
himself  from  sinking  into  melancholy,  '  singing  to  keep 
his  courage  up.'  His  gaiety  was  'the  madness  of  an 
intoxicated  criminal  under  the  hands  of  the  executioner.' 
A  Bard's  Epitaph,  however,  among  the  many  pieces  of 
this  season,  is  earnest  and  serious  enough  to  disarm 
hostile  criticism ;  and  his  loose  and  flippant  productions 
are  read  leniently  in  the  light  of  this  pathetic  confession. 
It  is  a  self-revelation  truly,  but  it  is  honest,  straight- 
forward, and  manly.  There  is  nothing  plaintive  or 
mawkish  about  it. 


70  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

We  next  find  Burns  flying  from  home  to  escape  legal 
measures  that  Jean  Armour's  father  was  instituting  against 
him.  He  was  in  hiding  at  Kilmarnock  to  be  out  of  the 
way  of  legal  diligence,  and  it  was  in  such  circumstances 
that  he  saw  his  poems  through  the  press.  Surely  never 
before  in  the  history  of  literature  had  book  burst  from 
such  a  medley  of  misfortunes  into  so  sudden  and  certain 
fame.  Born  in  tumult,  it  vindicated  its  volcanic  birth, 
and  took  the  hearts  of  men  by  storm.  Burns  says  little 
about  those  months  of  labour  and  bitterness.  We  know 
that  he  had  then  nearly  as  high  an  idea  of  himself  and 
his  works  as  he  had  in  later  life ;  he  had  watched  every 
means  of  information  as  to  how  much  ground  he  occupied 
as  a  man  and  a  poet,  and  was  sure  his  poems  would  meet 
with  some  applause.  He  had  subscriptions  for  about 
three  hundred  and  fifty,  and  he  got  six  hundred  copies 
printed,  pocketing,  after  all  expenses  were  paid,  nearly 
twenty  pounds.  With  nine  guineas  of  this  sum  he 
bespoke  a  passage  in  the  first  ship  that  was  to  sail  for 
the  West  Indies.  '  I  had  for  some  time,'  he  says,  '  been 
skulking  from  covert  to  covert  under  all  the  terrors  of  a 
jail,  as  some  ill-advised,  ungrateful  people  had  uncoupled 
the  merciless,  legal  pack  at  my  heels.  I  had  taken  the 
last  farewell  of  my  friends ;  my  chest  was  on  the  road  to 
Greenock ;  I  had  composed  the  song  The  Gloomy  Night 
is  Gathering  Fast>  which  was  to  be  the  last  effort  of  my 
muse  in  Caledonia,  when  a  letter  from  Dr.  Blacklock  to 
a  friend  of  mine  overthrew  all  my  schemes,  by  rousing 
my  poetic  ambition.  The  doctor  belonged  to  a  class  of 
critics,  for  whose  applause  I  had  not  even  dared  to  hope. 
His  idea  that  I  would  meet  with  every  encouragement 
for  a  second  edition  fired  me  so  much,  that  away  I 


ROBERT  BURNS  71 

posted  to  Edinburgh,  without  a  single  acquaintance  in 
town,  or  a  single  letter  of  recommendation  in  my  pocket.' 

It  was  towards  the  end  of  July  that  the  poems  were 
published,  and  they  met  with  a  success  that  must  have 
been  gratifying  to  those  friends  who  had  stood  by  the 
poet  in  his  hour  of  adversity,  and  done  what  they  could 
to  ensure  subscriptions.  In  spite  of  the  fact  that  Burns 
certainly  looked  upon  himself  as  possessed  of  some 
poetic  abilities,  the  reception  the  little  volume  met  with, 
and  the  impression  it  at  once  made,  must  have  exceeded 
his  wildest  anticipations.  Even  yet,  however,  he  did  not 
relinquish  the  idea  of  going  to  America.  On  the  other 
hand,  as  we  have  seen,  the  first  use  he  made  of  the 
money  which  publication  had  brought  him,  was  to 
secure  a  berth  in  a  vessel  bound  for  Jamaica.  But  he 
was  still  compelled  by  the  dramatic  uncertainty  of  cir- 
cumstance. The  day  of  sailing  was  postponed,  else  had 
he  certainly  left  his  native  land.  It  was  only  after  Jean 
Armour  had  become  the  mother  of  twin  children  that 
there  was  any  hint  of  diffidence  about  sailing.  In  a 
letter  to  Robert  Aitken,  written  in  October,  he  says : 
'  All  these  reasons  urge  me  to  go  abroad,  and  to  all  these 
reasons  I  have  one  answer — the  feelings  of  a  father. 
That  in  the  present  mood  I  am  in  overbalances  every- 
thing that  can  be  laid  in  the  scale  against  it.' 

His  friends,  too,  after  the  success  of  his  poems,  were 
beginning  to  be  doubtful  about  the  wisdom  of  his  going 
abroad,  and  were  doing  what  they  could  to  secure  for 
him  a  place  in  the  Excise.  For  his  fame  had  gone 
beyond  the  bounds  of  his  native  county,  and  others  than 
people  in  his  own  station  had  recognised  his  genius. 
Mrs.  Dunlop  of  Dunlop  was  one  of  the  first  to  seek  the 


72  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

poet's  acquaintance,  and  she  became  an  almost  lifelong 
friend;  through  his  poems  he  renewed  acquaintance 
with  Mrs.  Stewart  of  Stair.  He  was  '  roosed '  by  Craigen- 
Gillan;  Dugald  Stewart,  the  celebrated  metaphysician, 
and  one  of  the  best-known  names  in  the  learned  and 
literary  circles  of  Edinburgh,  who  happened  to  be 
spending  his  vacation  at  Catrine,  not  very  far  from 
Mossgiel,  invited  the  poet  to  dine  with  him,  and  on  that 
occasion  he  '  dinnered  wi'  a  laird ' — Lord  Daer.  Then 
came  the  appreciative  letter  from  Dr.  Blacklock  to  the 
Rev.  George  Lawrie  of  Loudon,  already  mentioned. 
Even  this  letter  might  not  have  proved  strong  enough  to 
detain  him  in  Scotland,  had  it  not  been  that  he  was 
disappointed  of  a  second  edition  of  his  poems  in  Kil- 
marnock.  Other  encouragement  came  from  Edinburgh 
in  a  very  favourable  criticism  of  his  poems  in  the  Edin- 
burgh Magazine.  This,  taken  along  with  Dr.  Blacklock's 
suggestion  about  '  a  second  edition  more  numerous  than 
the  former,'  led  the  poet  to  believe  that  his  work  would 
be  taken  up  by  any  of  the  Edinburgh  publishers.  The 
feelings  of  a  father  also  urged  him  to  remain  in  Scotland ; 
and  at  length — probably  in  November — the  thought  of 
exile  was  abandoned.  It  was  with  very  different  feelings, 
we  may  be  sure,  that  he  contemplated  setting  out  from 
Mossgiel  to  sojourn  for  a  season  in  Edinburgh — a  name 
that  had  ever  been  associated  in  his  mind  with  the  best 
traditions  of  learning  and  literature  in  Scotland. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   EDINBURGH   EDITION 

EDINBURGH  towards  the  close  of  last  century  was  a 
very  different  place  from  Edinburgh  of  the  present  day. 
It  was  then  to  a  certain  extent  the  hub  of  Scottish 
society ;  the  centre  of  learning  and  literature ;  the  winter 
rendezvous  of  not  a  few  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  of 
Scotland.  For  in  those  days  it  had  its  society  and  its 
season ;  county  families  had  not  altogether  abandoned 
the  custom  of  keeping  their  houses  in  town.  All  roads 
did  not  then  lead  to  London  as  they  do  now,  when  Edin- 
burgh is  a  capital  in  little  more  than  name,  and  its 
prestige  has  become  a  tradition.  A  century  ago  Edin- 
burgh had  all  the  glamour  and  fascination  of  the  capital 
of  a  no  mean  country ;  to-day  it  is  but  the  historical 
capital  invested  with  the  glamour  and  fascination  of  a 
departed  glory.  The  very  names  of  those  whom  Burns 
met  on  his  first  visit  to  Edinburgh  are  part  of  the  history 
of  the  nation.  In  the  University  there  were  at  that  time, 
representative  of  the  learning  of  the  age,  Dugald  Stewart, 
Dr.  Blair,  and  Dr.  Robertson.  David  Hume  was  but 
recently  dead,  and  the  lustre  of  his  name  remained. 
His  great  friend,  Adam  Smith,  author  of  The  Wealth  of 
Nations^  was  still  living;  while  Henry  Mackenzie,  The 
Man  of  Feeling,  the  most  popular  writer  of  his  day,  was 

73 


74  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

editing  The  Lounger  •  and  Dr.  Blacklock,  the  blind  poet, 
was  also  a  name  of  authority  in  the  world  of  letters. 
Nor  was  the  Bar,  whose  magnates  have  ever  figured  in 
the  front  rank  of  Edinburgh  society,  eclipsed  by  the 
literary  luminaries  of  the  University.  Lord  Monboddo 
has  left  a  name,  which  his  countrymen  are  not  likely  to 
forget  He  was  an  accomplished,  though  eccentric 
character,  whose  classical  bent  was  in  the  direction  of 
Epicurean  parties.  His  great  desire  was  to  revive  the 
traditions  of  the  elegant  suppers  of  classical  times.  Not 
only  were  music  and  painting  employed  to  this  end,  but 
the  tables  were  wreathed  with  flowers,  the  odour  of 
incense  pervaded  the  room;  the  wines  were  of  the 
choicest,  served  from  decanters  of  Grecian  design.  But, 
perhaps,  the  chief  attraction  to  Burns  in  the  midst  of 
all  this  super  -  refinement  was  the  presence  of  'the 
heavenly  Miss  Burnet,'  daughter  of  Lord  Monboddo. 
1  There  has  not  been  anything  nearly  like  her,'  he  wrote 
to  his  friend  Chalmers,  'in  all  the  combinations  of 
beauty  and  grace  and  goodness  the  great  Creator  has 
formed  since  Milton's  Eve  in  the  first  day  of  her 
existence.'  The  Hon.  Henry  Erskine  was  another  well- 
known  name,  not  only  in  legal  circles,  but  as  well  in 
fashionable  society.  His  genial  and  sunny  nature  made 
him  so  great  a  favourite  in  his  profession,  that  having 
been  elected  Dean  of  the  Faculty  of  Advocates  in  1786, 
he  was  unanimously  re-elected  every  year  till  1796,  when 
he  was  victorious  over  Dundas  of  Arniston,  who  had 
been  brought  forward  in  opposition  to  him.  The  leader 
of  fashion  was  the  celebrated  Duchess  of  Gordon,  who 
was  never  absent  from  a  public  place,  and  '  the  later  the 
hour  so  much  the  better.'  Her  amusements — her  life, 


ROBERT  BURNS  75 

we  might  say — were  dancing,  cards,  and  company.  With 
such  a  leader,  the  season  to  the  very  select  and  elegant 
society  of  Edinburgh  was  certain  to  be  a  time  of  brilliance 
and  gaiety;  while  its  very  exclusiveness,  and  the  fact 
that  it  affected  or  reflected  the  literary  life  of  the  Uni- 
versity and  the  Bar,  would  make  it  all  the  more  ready  to 
lionise  a  man  like  Burns  when  the  opportunity  came. 

The  members  of  the  middle  class  caught  their  tone 
from  the  upper  ranks,  and  took  their  nightly  sederunts 
and  morning  headaches  as  privileges  they  dared  aristo- 
cratic exclusiveness  to  deny  them.  Douce  citizens,  mer- 
chants, respectable  tradesmen,  well-to-do  lawyers,  for- 
gathered when  the  labours  of  the  day  were  done  to  spend 
a  few  hours  in  some  snug  back-parlour,  where  mine  host 
granted  them  the  privileges  and  privacy  of  a  club.  Such 
social  beings  as  these,  met  to  discuss  punch,  law,  and 
literature,  were  no  less  likely  than  their  aristocratic 
neighbours  to  receive  Burns  with  open  arms,  and  once 
he  was  in  their  midst  to  prolong  their  sittings  in  his 
honour.  Nor  was  Burns,  if  he  found  them  honest  and 
hearty  fellows,  the  man  to  say  them  nay.  He  was 
eminently  a  social  and  sociable  being,  and  in  company 
such  as  theirs  he  could  unbend  himself  as  he  might  not 
do  in  the  houses  of  punctilious  society.  The  etiquette 
of  that  howff  of  the  Crochallan  Fencibles  in  the  Anchor 
Close  or  of  Johnnie  Bowie's  tavern  in  Libberton's 
Wynd  was  not  the  etiquette  of  drawing-rooms;  and  the 
poet  was  free  to  enliven  the  hours  with  a  rattling  fire  of 
witty  remarks  on  men  and  things  as  he  had  been  wont 
to  do  on  the  bog  at  Lochlea,  with  only  a  few  noteless 
peasants  for  audience. 

Burns  entered   Edinburgh  on  November   28,   1786. 


76  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

He  had  spent  the  night  after  leaving  Mossgiel  at  the 
farm  of  Covington  Mains,  where  the  kind-hearted  host, 
Mr.  Prentice,  had  all  the  farmers  of  the  parish  gathered 
to  meet  him.  This  is  of  interest  as  showing  the  popu- 
larity Burns's  poems  had  already  won;  while  the  eagerness 
of  those  farmers  to  see  and  know  the  man  after  they  had 
read  his  poems  proves  most  strikingly  how  straight  the 
poet  had  gone  to  the  hearts  of  his  readers.  They  had 
recognised  the  voice  of  a  human  being,  and  heard  it 
gladly.  This  gathering  was  convincing  testimony,  if  such 
were  needed,  of  the  truthfulness  and  sincerity  of  his 
writings.  No  doubt  Burns,  with  his  great  force  of  under- 
standing, appreciated  the  welcome  of  those  brother- 
farmers,  and  valued  it  above  the  adulation  he  afterwards 
received  in  Edinburgh.  The  Kilmarnock  Edition  was 
but  a  few  months  old,  yet  here  was  a  gathering  of  hard- 
working men,  who  had  read  his  poems,  we  may  be  sure, 
from  cover  to  cover,  and  now  they  were  eager  to  thank 
him  who  had  sung  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  their  worka- 
day lives.  Of  course  there  was  a  great  banquet,  and 
night  wore  into  morning  before  the  company  dispersed. 
They  had  seen  the  poet  face  to  face,  and  the  man  was 
greater  than  his  poems. 

Next  morning  he  resumed  his  journey,  breakfasting  at 
Carnwath,  and  reaching  Edinburgh  in  the  evening.  He 
had  come,  as  he  tells  us,  without  a  letter  of  introduction 
in  his  pocket,  and  he  took  up  his  abode  with  John 
Richmond  in  Baxter's  Close,  off  the  Lawnmarket.  He 
had  known  Richmond  when  he  was  a  clerk  with  Gavin 
Hamilton,  and  had  kept  up  a  correspondence  with  him 
ever  since  he  had  left  Mauchline.  The  lodging  was  a 
humble  enough  one,  the  rent  being  only  three  shillings  a 


ROBERT  BURNS  77 

week;  but  here  Burns  lodged  all  the  time  he  was  in 
Edinburgh,  and  it  was  hither  he  returned  from  visiting 
the  houses  of  the  rich  and  great,  to  share  a  bed  with  his 
friend  and  companion  of  many  a  merry  meeting  at 
Mauchline. 

It  would  be  vain  to  attempt  to  describe  Burns's  feelings 
during  those  first  few  days  in  Edinburgh.  He  had  never 
before  been  in  a  larger  town  than  Kilmarnock  or  Ayr ; 
and  now  he  walked  the  streets  of  Scotland's  capital,  to 
him  full  of  history  and  instinct  with  the  associations  of 
centuries.  This  was  really  the  heart  of  Scotland,  the 
home  of  heroes  who  fought  and  fell  for  their  country, 
*  the  abode  of  kings  of  other  years.'  His  sentimental 
attachment  to  Jacobitism  became  more  pronounced  as 
he  looked  on  Holyrood.  For  Burns,  a  representative  of 
the  strength  and  weakness  of  his  countrymen,  was  no  less 
representative  of  Scotland's  sons  in  his  chivalrous  pity  for 
the  fate  of  Queen  Mary  and  his  romantic  loyalty  to  the 
gallant  Prince  Charlie.  His  poetical  espousal  of  the  cause 
of  the  luckless  Stuarts  was  purely  a  matter  of  sentiment,  a 
kind  of  pious  pity  that  had  little  to  do  with  reason ;  and 
in  this  he  was  typical  of  his  countrymen  even  of  the 
present  day,  who  are  loyal  to  the  house  of  Stuart  in 
song,  and  in  life  are  loyal  subjects  of  their  Queen. 

We  are  told,  and  we  can  well  believe  that  for  the  first 
few  days  of  his  stay  he  wandered  about,  looking  down 
from  Arthur's  Seat,  gazing  at  the  Castle,  or  contemplating 
the  windows  of  the  booksellers'  shops.  We  know  that  he 
made  a  special  pilgrimage  to  the  grave  of  Fergusson,  and 
that  in  a  letter,  dated  February  6,  1787,  he  applied  to 
the  honourable  bailies  of  Canongate,  Edinburgh,  for 
permission  'to  lay  a  simple  stone  over  his  revered  ashes'; 


78  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

which  petition  was  duly  considered  and  graciously 
granted.  The  stone  was  afterwards  erected,  with  the 
simple  inscription,  'Here  lies  Robert  Fergusson,  Poet. 
Born  September  5th,  1751;  died  i6th  October,  1774. 

No  sculptured  marble  here,  nor  pompous  lay, 
"No  storied  urn  nor  animated  bust"; 

This  simple  stone  directs  pale  Scotia's  way 
To  pour  her  sorrow  o'er  her  poet's  dust.' 

On  the  reverse  side  is  recorded  the  fact  that  the  stone 
was  erected  by  Robert  Burns,  and  that  the  ground  was 
to  remain  for  ever  sacred  to  the  memory  of  Robert 
Fergusson. 

It  is  related,  too,  that  he  visited  Ramsay's  house,  and 
that  he  bared  his  head  when  he  entered.  Burns  over 
and  over  again,  both  in  prose  and  verse,  turned  to  these 
two'  names  with  a  kind  of  fetich  worship,  that  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  understand.  He  must  have  known  that,  as  a  poet, 
he  was  immeasurably  superior  to  both.  It  may  have 
been  that  their  writings  first  opened  his  eyes  to  the 
possibilities  of  the  Scots  tongue  in  lyrical  and  descriptive 
poetry ;  and  there  was  something  also  which  appealed  to 
him  in  the  wretched  life  of  Fergusson. 

*  O  thou,  my  elder  brother  in  misfortune, 
By  far  my  elder  brother  in  the  Muses.' 

His  elder  brother  indeed  by  some  six  years  !  But  there 
is  more  of  reverence  than  sound  judgment  in  his  estimate 
of  either  Ramsay  or  Fergusson. 

Burns,  however,  had  come  to  Edinburgh  with  a  fixed 
purpose  in  view,  and  it  would  not  do  to  waste  his  time 
mooning  about  the  streets.  On  December  7  we  find 
him  writing  to  Gavin  Hamilton,  half  seriously,  half 


ROBERT  BURNS  79 

jokingly :  '  I  am  in  a  fair  way  of  becoming  as  eminent  as 
Thomas  a  Kempis  or  John  Bunyan,  and  you  may  ex- 
pect  henceforth  to  see  my  birthday  inserted  among  the 
wonderful  events  in  the  Poor  Robins'  and  Aberdeen 
Almanacs  along  with  the  Black  Monday  and  the  Battle 
of  Bothwell  Bridge.  My  Lord  Glencairn  and  the  Dean 
of  Faculty,  Mr.  H.  Erskine,  have  taken  me  under  their 
wing,  and  by  all  probability  I  shall  soon  be  the  tenth 
worthy  and  the  eighth  wise  man  of  the  world.  Through 
my  lord's  influence  it  is  inserted  in  the  records  of  the 
Caledonian  Hunt  that  they  universally  one  and  all  sub- 
scribe for  the  second  edition.' 

This  letter  shows  that  Burns  had  already  been  taken 
up,  as  the  phrase  goes,  by  the  elite  of  Edinburgh ;  and 
it  shows  also  and  quite  as  clearly  in  the  tone  of  quiet 
banter,  that  he  was  little  likely  to  lose  his  head  by  the 
notice  taken  of  him.  To  the  Earl  of  Glencairn,  men- 
tioned in  it,  he  had  been  introduced  probably  by  Mr. 
Dalrymple  of  Orangefield,  whom  he  knew  both  as  a 
brother  -  mason  and  a  brother  -  poet.  The  Earl  had 
already  seen  the  Kilmarnock  Edition  of  the  poems,  and 
now  he  not  only  introduced  Burns  to  William  Creech, 
the  leading  publisher  in  Edinburgh,  but  he  got  the 
members  of  the  Caledonian  Hunt  to  become  subscribers 
for  a  second  edition  of  the  poems.  To  Erskine  he  had 
been  introduced  at  a  meeting  of  the  Canongate  Kil- 
winning  Lodge  of  Freemasons ;  and  assuredly  there 
was  no  man  living  more  likely  to  exert  himself  in  the 
interests  of  a  genius  like  Burns. 

Two  days  after  this  letter  to  Gavin  Hamilton  there 
appeared  in  The  Lounger  Mackenzie's  appreciative 
notice  of  the  Kilmarnock  Edition.  This  notice  has 


8o  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

become  historical,  and  at  the  time  of  its  appearance 
it  must  have  been  peculiarly  gratifying  to  Burns.  He 
had  remarked  before,  in  reference  to  the  letter  from 
Dr.  Blacklock,  that  the  doctor  belonged  to  a  class  of 
critics  for  whose  applause  he  had  not  even  dared  to 
hope.  Now  his  work  was  criticised  most  favourably  by 
the  one  who  was  regarded  as  the  highest  authority  on 
literature  in  Scotland.  If  a  writer  was  praised  in  The 
Lounger^  his  fame  was  assured.  He  went  into  the  world 
with  the  hall-mark  of  Henry  Mackenzie ;  and  what  more 
was  needed  ?  The  oracle  had  spoken,  and  his  decision 
was  final.  His  pronouncement  would  be  echoed  and 
re-echoed  from  end  to  end  of  the  country.  And  this 
great  critic  claimed  no  special  indulgence  for  Burns  on 
the  plea  of  his  mean  birth  or  poor  education.  He  saw 
in  this  heaven-taught  ploughman  a  genius  of  no  ordinary 
rank,  a  man  who  possessed  the  spirit  as  well  as  the  fancy 
of  a  great  poet.  He  was  a  poet,  and  it  mattered  not 
whether  he  had  been  born  a  peasant  or  a  peer.  '  His 
poetry,  considered  abstractedly  and  without  the  apologies 
arising  from  his  situation,  seems  to  me  fully  entitled  to 
command  our  feelings  and  obtain  our  applause.  .  .  . 
The  power  of  genius  is  not  less  admirable  in  tracing  the 
manners,  than  in  painting  the  passions  or  in  drawing  the 
scenery  of  nature.  That  intuitive  glance  with  which  a 
writer  like  Shakspeare  discerns  the  character  of  men, 
with  which  he  catches  the  many  changing  hues  of  life, 
forms  a  sort  of  problem  in  the  science  of  mind,  of  which 
it  is  easier  to  see  the  truth  than  assign  the  cause/ 

But  Mackenzie  did  more  than  praise.  He  pointed 
out  the  fact  that  the  author  had  had  a  terrible  struggle 
with  poverty  all  the  days  of  his  life,  and  made  an  appeal 


ROBERT  BURNS  81 

to  his  country  '  to  stretch  out  her  hand  and  retain  the 
native  poet  whose  wood-notes  wild  possessed  so  much 
excellence.'  There  seems  little  doubt  that  the  con- 
cluding words  of  this  notice  led  Burns  for  the  first  time 
to  hope  and  believe  that,  through  some  influential  patron, 
he  might  be  placed  in  a  position  to  face  the  future 
without  a  fear,  and  to  cultivate  poetry  at  his  leisure. 
There  is  no  mistaking  the  meaning  of  Mackenzie's 
words,  and  he  had  evidently  used  them  with  the  con- 
viction that  something  would  be  done  for  Burns. 
Unfortunately,  he  was  mistaken;  the  poet,  at  first 
misled,  was  slowly  disillusioned  and  somewhat  em- 
bittered. *  To  repair  the  wrongs  of  suffering  or  neglected 
merit ;  to  call  forth  genius  from  the  obscurity  where  it 
had  pined  indignant,  and  place  it  where  it  may  profit  or 
delight  the  world — these  are  exertions  which  give  to 
wealth  an  enviable  superiority,  to  greatness  and  to 
patronage  a  laudable  pride.' 

To  Burns,  at  the  time,  such  a  criticism  as  this  must 
have  been  all  the  more  pleasing,  inasmuch  as  it  was  the 
verdict  of  a  man  whose  best-known  work  had  been  one 
of  the  poet's  favourite  books.  We  can  easily  imagine 
that,  under  the  patronage  of  Lord  Glencairn  and  Henry 
Erskine,  and  after  Mackenzie's  generous  recognition  of 
his  genius,  the  doors  of  the  best  houses  in  Edinburgh 
would  be  open  to  him.  His  letter  to  John  Ballantine, 
Ayr,  written  a  few  days  after  this  criticism  appeared, 
shows  in  what  circles  the  poet  was  then  moving.  'I 
have  been  introduced  to  a  good  many  of  the  noblesse, 
but  my  avowed  patrons  and  patronesses  are,  the  Duchess 
of  Gordon,  the  Countess  of  Glencairn  with  my  Lord 
and  Lady  Betty,  the  Dean  of  Faculty,  Sir  John  White- 
6 


82  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

foord.  I  have  likewise  warm  friends  among  the  literati '; 
Professors  Stewart,  Blair,  and  Mr.  Mackenzie,  The  Man 
of  Feeling.  .  .  .  I  am  nearly  agreed  with  Creech  to  print 
my  book,  and  I  suppose  I  will  begin  on  Monday.  .  .  . 
Dugald  Stewart  and  some  of  my  learned  friends  put  me 
in  a  periodical  called  The  Lounger •,  a  copy  of  which  I 
here  enclose  you.  I  was,  Sir,  when  I  was  first  honoured 
with  your  notice,  too  obscure;  now  I  tremble  lest  I 
should  be  ruined  by  being  dragged  too  suddenly  into 
the  glare  of  learned  and  polite  observation.' 

Burns  was  now  indeed  the  lion  of  Edinburgh.  It 
must  have  been  a  great  change  for  a  man  to  have  come 
straight  from  the  stilts  of  the  plough  to  be  dined  and 
toasted  by  such  men  as  Lord  Glencairn,  Lord  Mon- 
boddo,  and  the  Hon.  Henry  Erskine ;  to  be  feted  and 
flattered  by  the  Duchess  of  Gordon,  the  Countess  of 
Glencairn,  and  Lady  Betty  Cunningham ;  to  count 
amongst  his  friends  Mr.  Mackenzie  and  Professors 
Stewart  and  Blair.  It  would  have  been  little  wonder  if 
his  head  had  been  turned  by  the  patronage  of  the 
nobility,  the  deference  and  attention  of  the  literary  and 
learned  coteries  of  Edinburgh.  But  Burns  was  too 
sensible  to  be  carried  away  by  the  adulation  of  a  season. 
A  man  of  his  keenness  of  penetration  and  clearness  of 
insight  would  appreciate  the  praise  of  the  world  at  its 
proper  value.  He  bore  himself  with  becoming  dignity, 
taking  his  place  in  refined  society  as  one  who  had  a 
right  there,  without  showing  himself  either  conceitedly 
aggressive  or  meanly  servile.  He  took  his  part  in 
conversation,  but  no  more  than  his  part,  and  expressed 
himself  with  freedom  and  decision.  His  conversation, 
in  fact,  astonished  the  literati  even  more  than  his  poems 


ROBERT  BURNS  83 

had  done.  Perhaps  they  had  expected  some  uncouth 
individual  who  would  stammer  crop  -  and  -  weather 
commonplaces  in  a  rugged  vernacular,  or,  worse  still, 
in  ungrammatical  English ;  but  here  was  one  who  held 
his  own  with  them  in  speculative  discussion,  speaking 
not  only  with  the  eloquence  of  a  poet,  but  with  the 
readiness,  clearness,  and  fluency  of  a  man  of  letters. 
His  pure  English  diction  astonished  them,  but  his 
acuteness  of  reasoning,  his  intuitive  knowledge  of  men 
and  the  world,  was  altogether  beyond  their  comprehen- 
sion. All  they  had  got  by  years  of  laborious  study 
this  man  appeared  to  have  as  a  natural  gift.  In  repartee, 
even,  he  could  more  than  hold  his  own  with  them,  and 
in  the  presence  of  ladies  could  turn  a  compliment  with 
the  best.  'It  needs  no  effort  of  imagination,'  says 
Lockhart,  '  to  conceive  what  the  sensations  of  an  isolated 
set  of  scholars  (almost  all  either  clergymen  or  professors) 
must  have  been  in  the  presence  of  this  big-boned,  black- 
browed,  brawny  stranger,  who,  having  forced  his  way 
among  them  from  the  plough-tail  at  a  single  stride, 
manifested  in  the  whole  strain  of  his  bearing  and  con- 
versation a  most  thorough  conviction  that  in  the  society 
of  the  most  eminent  men  of  his  nation  he  was  exactly 
where  he  was  entitled  to  be/  It  was  a  new  world  to 
Burns,  yet  he  walked  about  as  if  he  were  of  old  familiar 
with  its  ways;  he  conducted  himself  in  society  like 
one  to  the  manner  born. 

All  who  have  left  written  evidence  of  Burns's  visit  to 
Edinburgh  are  agreed  that  he  conducted  himself  with 
manliness  and  dignity,  and  all  have  left  record  of  the 
powerful  impression  his  conversation  made  on  them. 
His  poems  were  wonderful;  himself  was  greater  than 


84  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

his  poems,  a  giant  in  intellect.  A  ploughman  who 
actually  dared  to  have  formed  a  distinct  conception  of 
the  doctrine  of  association  was  a  miracle  before  which 
schools  and  scholars  were  dumb.  '  Nothing,  perhaps/ 
Dugald  Stewart  wrote,  '  was  more  remarkable  among  his 
various  attainments  than  the  fluency,  precision,  and 
originality  of  his  language  when  he  spoke  in  company ; 
more  particularly  as  he  aimed  at  purity  in  his  turn  of 
expression,  and  avoided  more  successfully  than  most 
Scotchmen  the  peculiarities  of  Scottish  phraseology.' 

And  Professor  Stewart  goes  further  than  this  when  he 
speaks  of  the  soundness  and  sanity  of  Burns's  nature. 
'  The  attentions  he  received  during  his  stay  in  town  from 
all  ranks  and  descriptions  of  persons,  were  such  as  would 
have  turned  any  head  but  his  own.  He  retained  the 
same  simplicity  of  manner  and  appearance  which  had 
struck  me  so  forcibly  when  I  first  saw  him  in  the  country  ; 
nor  did  he  seem  to  feel  any  additional  self-importance 
from  the  number  and  rank  of  his  new  acquaintance. 
His  dress  was  perfectly  suited  to  his  station,  plain  and 
unpretentious,  with  a  sufficient  attention  to  neatness.' 
Principal  Robertson  has  left  it  on  record,  that  he  had 
scarcely  ever  met  with  any  man  whose  conversation 
displayed  greater  vigour  than  that  of  Burns.  Walter 
Scott,  a  youth  of  some  sixteen  years  at  the  time,  met 
Burns  at  the  house  of  Dr.  Adam  Ferguson,  and  was 
particularly  struck  with  his  poetic  eye,  'which  literally 
glowed  when  he  spoke  with  feeling  or  interest,'  and  with 
his  forcible  conversation.  'Among  the  men  who  were 
the  most  learned  of  their  time  and  country,  he  expressed 
himself  with  perfect  firmness,  but  without  the  least  in- 
trusive forwardness ;  and  when  he  differed  in  opinion,  he 


ROBERT  BURNS  85 

did  not  hesitate  to  express  it  firmly,  and  at  the  same 
time  with  modesty.  ...  I  never  saw  a  man  in  company 
more  perfectly  free  from  either  the  reality  or  the  affecta- 
tion of  embarrassment.'  To  these  may  be  added  the 
testimony  of  Dr.  Walker,  who  gives,  perhaps,  the  most 
complete  and  convincing  picture  of  the  man  at  this 
time.  He  insists  on  the  same  outstanding  characteristics 
in  Burns,  his  innate  dignity,  his  unaffected  demeanour 
in  company,  and  brilliancy  in  conversation.  In  no  part 
of  his  manner,  we  read,  was  there  the  slightest  degree  of 
affectation,  and  no  one  could  have  guessed  from  his 
behaviour  or  conversation,  that  he  had  been  for  some 
months  the  favourite  of  all  the  fashionable  circles  of  a 
metropolis.  '  In  conversation  he  was  powerful.  His 
conceptions  and  expression  were  of  corresponding  vigour, 
and  .on  all  subjects  were  as  remote  as  possible  from 
commonplace.' 

But  whilst  ladies  of  rank  and  fashion  were  deluging 
this  Ayrshire  ploughman  with  invitations,  and  vying 
one  with  another  in  their  patronage  and  worship,  the 
mind  of  the  poet  was  no  less  busy  registering  im- 
pressions of  every  new  experience.  If  the  learned  men 
of  Edinburgh  set  themselves  to  study  the  character  of  a 
genius  who  upset  all  their  cherished  theories  of  birth 
and  education,  and  to  chronicle  his  sayings  and  doings, 
Burns  at  the  same  time  was  studying  them,  gauging  their 
powers  intuitively,  telling  their  limitations  at  a  glance. 
For  he  must  measure  every  man  he  met,  and  himself 
with  him.  His  standard  was  always  the  same;  every 
brain  was  weighed  against  his  own ;  but  with  Burns  this 
was  never  more  than  a  comparison  of  capacities.  He 
took  his  stand,  not  by  what  work  he  had  done,  but  by 


86  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

what  he  felt  he  was  capable  of  doing.  And  that  is  not, 
and  cannot  be,  the  way  of  the  world.  In  all  his  letters 
at  this  time  we  see  him  studying  himself  in  the  circles 
of  fashion  and  learning.  He  could  look  on  Robert 
Burns,  as  he  were  another  person,  brought  from  the 
plough  and  set  down  in  a  world  of  wealth  and  refine- 
ment, of  learning  and  wit  and  beauty.  He  saw  the 
dangers  that  beset  him,  and  the  temptations  to  which  he 
was  exposed ;  he  recognised  that  something  more  than 
his  poetic  abilities  was  needed  to  explain  his  sudden 
popularity.  He  was  the  vogue,  the  favourite  of  a  season ; 
but  public  favour  was  capricious,  and  next  year  the  doors 
of  the  great  might  be  closed  against  him ;  while  patrician 
dames  who  had  schemed  for  his  smiles  might  glance  at 
him  with  indifferent  eyes  as  at  a  dismissed  servant  once 
high  in  favour.  His  letter  to  Mrs.  Dunlop,  dated 
January  15,  may  be  taken  as  a  just,  deliberate,  and  clear 
expression  of  his  views  of  himself  and  society  at  this  time. 
The  letter  is  so  quietly  dignified  that  we  may  quote  at 
some  length.  c  You  are  afraid  I  shall  grow  intoxicated 
with  my  prosperity  as  a  poet.  Alas !  madam,  I  know 
myself  and  the  world  too  well.  I  do  not  mean  any  airs 
of  affected  modesty ;  I  am  willing  to  believe  that  my 
abilities  deserve  some  notice,  but  in  a  most  enlightened, 
informed  age  and  nation,  where  poetry  is  and  has  been 
the  study  of  men  of  the  first  natural  genius,  aided  with 
all  the  powers  of  polite  learning,  polite  books,  and  polite 
company — to  be  dragged  forth  to  the  full  glare  of  learned 
and  polite  observation,  with  all  my  imperfections  of 
awkward  rusticity  and  crude  and  unpolished  ideas  on 
my  head — I  assure  you,  madam,  I  do  not  dissemble 
when  I  tell  you  I  tremble  for  the  consequences.  The 


ROBERT  BURNS  87 

novelty  of  a  poet  in  my  obscure  situation,  without  any 
of  those  advantages  that  are  reckoned  necessary  for  that 
character,  at  least  at  this  time  of  day,  has  raised  a  partial 
tide  of  public  notice  which  has  borne  me  to  a  height 
where  I  am  absolutely,  feelingly  certain  my  abilities  are 
inadequate  to  support  me ;  and  too  surely  do  I  see  that 
time  when  the  same  tide  will  leave  me  and  recede,  per- 
haps as  far  below  the  mark  of  truth.  I  do  not  say  this 
in  the  ridiculous  affectation  of  self-abasement  and 
modesty.  I  have  studied  myself,  and  know  what  ground 
I  occupy ;  and  however  a  friend  or  the  world  may  differ 
from  me  in  that  particular,  I  stand  for  my  own  opinion 
in  silent  resolve,  with  all  the  tenaciousness  of  property. 
I  mention  this  to  you  once  for  all  to  disburden  my  mind, 
and  I  do  not  wish  to  hear  or  say  more  about  it.  But — 

"When  proud  fortune's  ebbing  tide  recedes," 

you  will  bear  me  witness  that  when  my  bubble  of  fame 
was  at  the  highest,  I  stood  unintoxicated  with  the  in- 
ebriating cup  in  my  hand,  looking  forward  with  rueful 
resolve  to  the  hastening  time  when  the  blow  of  calamity 
should  dash  it  to  the  ground  with  all  the  eagerness  of 
vengeful  triumph.' 

In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Moore  he  harps  on  the  same  string, 
for  he  sees  clearly  enough  that  though  his  abilities  as  a 
poet  are  worthy  of  recognition,  it  is  the  novelty  of  his 
position  and  the  strangeness  of  the  life  he  has  pictured 
in  his  poems  that  have  brought  him  into  polite  notice. 
The  field  of  his  poetry,  rather  than  the  poetry  itself, 
is  the  wonder  in  the  eyes  of  stately  society.  To  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Lawrie  of  Loudon  he  writes  in  a  similar  strain, 
and  speaks  even  more  emphatically.  From  all  his  letters, 


88  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

indeed,  at  this  time  we  gather  that  he  saw  that  novelty 
had  much  to  do  with  his  present  £clat ;  that  the  tide 
of  popularity  would  recede,  and  leave  him  at  his  leisure 
to  descend  to  his  former  situation ;  and,  above  all,  that 
he  was  prepared  for  this,  come  when  it  would. 

All  this  time  he  had  been  busy  correcting  the  proofs 
of  his  poems  ;  and  now  that  he  was  already  assured  the 
edition  would  be  a  success,  he  began  to  think  seriously 
of  the  future  and  of  settling  down  again  as  farmer. 
The  appellation  of  Scottish  Bard,  he  confessed  to  Mrs. 
Dunlop,  was  his  highest  pride ;  to  continue  to  deserve 
it,  his  most  exalted  ambition.  He  had  no  dearer  aim 
than  to  be  able  to  make  c  leisurely  pilgrimages  through 
Caledonia,  to  sit  on  the  fields  of  her  battles,  to  wander 
on  the  romantic  banks  of  her  rivers,  and  to  muse  by  the 
stately  towers  or  venerable  ruins,  once  the  honoured 
abodes  of  her  heroes.'  But  that  was  a  Utopian  dream; 
he  had  dallied  long  enough  with  life,  and  now  it  was 
time  he  should  be  in  earnest.  *  I  have  a  fond,  an  aged 
mother  to  care  for ;  and  some  other  bosom  ties  perhaps 
equally  tender.' 

Perhaps,  had  Burns  received  before  he  left  Edinburgh 
the  .£500  which  Creech  ultimately  paid  him  for  the 
Edinburgh  Edition,  he  might  have  gone  straight  to  a 
farm  in  the  south  country,  and  taken  up  what  he  con- 
sidered the  serious  business  of  life.  He  himself,  about 
this  time,  estimated  that  he  would  clear  nearly  ^"300  by 
authorship,  and  with  that  sum  he  intended  to  return  to 
farming.  Mr.  Miller  of  Dalswinton  had  expressed  a 
wish  to  have  Burns  as  tenant  of  one  of  his  farms,  and 
the  poet  had  been  already  approached  on  the  subject. 
We  also  gather  from  almost  every  letter  written  just 


ROBERT  BURNS  89 

before  the  publication  of  his  poems,  that  he  contemplated 
an  immediate  return  'to  his  shades.'  However,  when 
the  Edinburgh  Edition  came  out,  April  21,  1787,  the 
poet  found  that  it  would  be  a  considerable  time  before 
the  whole  profits  accruing  from  publication  could  be 
paid  over  to  him.  Indeed,  there  was  certainly  an  un- 
necessary delay  on  Creech's  part  in  making  a  settlement. 
The  first  instalment  of  profits  was  not  sufficient  for 
leasing  and  stocking  a  farm ;  and  during  the  months  that 
elapsed  before  the  whole  profits  were  in  his  hands,  Burns 
made  several  tours  through  the  Borders  and  Highlands 
of  Scotland.  This  was  certainly  one  of  his  dearest  aims  j 
but  these  tours  were  undertaken  somewhat  under  com- 
pulsion, and  we  doubt  not  he  would  much  more  gladly 
have  gone  straight  back  to  farm -life,  and  kept  these 
leisurely  pilgrimages  to  a  more  convenient  season.  One 
is  not  in  a  mood  for  dreaming  on  battlefields,  or  wander- 
ing in  a  reverie  by  romantic  rivers,  when  the  future  is 
unsettled  and  life  is  for  the  time  being  without  an  aim. 
There  is  something  of  mystery  and  melancholy  hanging 
about  these  peregrinations,  and  the  cause,  it  seems  to 
us,  is  not  far  to  seek.  These  months  are  months  of 
waiting  and  wearying ;  he  is  unsettled,  oftentimes  moody 
and  despondent ;  his  bursts  of  gaiety  appear  forced,  and 
his  muse  is  well-nigh  barren.  In  the  circumstances,  no 
doubt  it  was  the  best  thing  he  could  do,  to  gratify  his 
long-cherished  desire  of  seeing  these  places  in  his  native 
country,  whose  names  were  enshrined  in  song  or  story. 
But  how  much  more  pleasant — and  more  profitable  both 
to  the  poet  himself  and  the  country  he  loved — had  these 
journeys  been  made  under  more  favourable  conditions  ! 
The  past  also  as  much  as  the  future  weighed  on  the 


go  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

poet's  mind  His  days  had  been  so  fully  occupied  in 
Edinburgh  that  he  had  little  leisure  to  think  on  some 
dark  and  dramatic  episodes  of  Mauchline  and  Kilmar- 
nock ;  but  now  in  his  wanderings  he  has  time  not  only 
to  think  but  to  brood ;  and  we  may  be  sure  the  face  of 
Bonnie  Jean  haunted  him  in  dreams,  and  that  his  heart 
heard  again  and  again  the  plaintive  voices  of  little 
children.  In  several  of  his  letters  now  we  detect  a 
tone  of  bitterness,  in  which  we  suspect  there  is  more 
of  remorse  than  of  resentment  with  the  world.  He 
certainly  was  disappointed  that  Creech  could  not  pay 
him  in  full,  but  he  must  have  been  gratified  with  the 
reception  his  poems  had  got.  The  list  of  subscribers 
ran  to  thirty-eight  pages,  and  was  representative  of 
every  class  in  Scotland.  In  the  words  of  Cunningham  : 
'All  that  coterie  influence  and  individual  exertion — 
all  that  the  noblest  and  humblest  could  do,  was  done  to 
aid  in  giving  it  a  kind  reception.  Creech,  too,  had 
announced  it  through  the  booksellers  of  the  land,  and 
it  was  soon  diffused  over  the  country,  over  the  colonies, 
and  wherever  the  language  was  spoken.  The  literary 
men  of  the  South  seemed  even  to  fly  to  a  height  beyond 
those  of  the  North.  Some  hesitated  not  to  call  him  the 
Northern  Shakspeare.' 

This  surely  was  a  great  achievement  for  one  who, 
a  few  months  previously,  had  been  skulking  from  covert 
to  covert  to  escape  the  terrors  of  a  jail.  He  had 
hardly  dared  to  hope  for  the  commendation  of  the 
Edinburgh  critics,  yet  he  had  been  received  by  the  best 
society  of  the  capital ;  his  genius  had  been  recognised 
by  the  highest  literary  authorities  of  Scotland;  and 
now  the  second  edition  of  his  poems  was  published 


ROBERT  BURNS  91 

under  auspices  that  gave  it  the  character  of  a  national 
book. 

If  the  poems  this  volume  contained  established  fully 
and  finally  the  reputation  of  the  poet,  the  subscription 
list  was  a  no  less  substantial  proof  of  a  generous  and 
enthusiastic  appreciation  of  his  genius  on  the  part  of  his 
countrymen.  And  that  Burns  must  have  recognised. 
A  man  of  his  sound  common  sense  could  not  have 
expected  more. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BURNS'S   TOURS 

THE  Edinburgh  Edition  having  now  been  published, 
there  was  no  reason  for  the  poet  to  prolong  his  stay  in 
the  city.  It  was  only  after  being  disappointed  of  a 
second  Kilmarnock  Edition  of  his  poems  that  he  had 
come  to  try  his  fortunes  in  the  capital ;  and  now  that  his 
hopes  of  a  fuller  edition  and  a  wider  field  had  been 
realised,  the  purpose  of  his  visit  was  accomplished,  and 
there  was  no  need  to  fritter  his  time  away  in  idleness. 

In  a  letter  to  Lord  Buchan,  Burns  had  doubted  the 
prudence  of  a  penniless  poet  faring  forth  to  see  the 
sights  of  his  native  land.  But  circumstances  have 
changed.  With  the  assured  prospect  of  the  financial 
success  of  his  second  venture,  he  felt  himself  in  a 
position  to  gratify  the  dearest  wish  of  his  heart  and 
to  fire  his  muse  at  Scottish  story  and  Scottish  scenes. 
Moreover,  as  has  been  said,  it  would  be  some  time 
before  Creech  could  come  to  a  final  settlement  of 
accounts  with  the  poet,  and  he  may  have  deemed 
that  the  interval  would  be  profitably  spent  in  travel. 
His  travelling  companion  on  his  first  tour  was  a  Mr. 
Robert  Ainslie,  a  young  gentleman  of  good  education 
and  some  natural  ability,  with  whom  he  left  Edinburgh 

on  the  5th  May,  a  fortnight  after  the  publication  of  his 

92 


ROBERT  BURNS  93 

poems.  We  are  told  that  the  poet,  just  before  he 
mounted  his  horse,  received  a  letter  from  Dr.  Blair, 
which,  having  partly  read,  he  crumpled  up  and  angrily 
thrust  into  his  pocket.  A  perusal  of  the  letter  will 
explain,  if  it  does  not  go  far  to  justify,  the  poet's  irrita- 
tion. It  is  a  sleek,  superior  production,  with  the  tone  of 
a  temperance  tract,  and  the  stilted  diction  of  a  dominie. 
The  doctor  is  in  it  one  of  those  well-meaning,  meddle- 
some men,  lavish  of  academic  advice.  Burns  resented 
moral  prescriptions  at  all  times — more  especially  from 
one  whose  knowledge  of  men  was  severely  scholastic; 
and  we  can  well  imagine  that  he  quitted  Edinburgh  in 
no  amiable  mood. 

From  Edinburgh  the  two  journeyed  by  the  Lammer- 
muirs  to  Berrywell,  near  Duns,  where  the  Ainslie  family 
lived.  On  the  Sunday  he  attended  church  with  the 
Ainslies,  where  the  minister,  Dr.  Bowmaker,  preached  a 
sermon  against  obstinate  sinners.  'I  am  found  out,' 
the  poet  remarked,  'wherever  I  go.'  From  Duns  they 
proceeded  to  Coldstream,  where,  having  crossed  the 
Tweed,  Burns  first  set  foot  on  English  ground.  Here 
it  was  that,  with  bared  head,  he  knelt  and  prayed  for  a 
blessing  on  Scotland,  reciting  with  the  deepest  devotion 
the  two  concluding  verses  of  The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night. 

The  next  place  visited  was  Kelso,  where  they  admired 
the  old  abbey,  and  went  to  see  Roxburgh  Castle,  thence 
to  Jedburgh,  where  he  met  a  Miss  Hope  and  a  Miss 
Lindsay,  the  latter  of  whom  *  thawed  his  heart  into 
melting  pleasure  after  being  so  long  frozen  up  in  the 
Greenland  Bay  of  indifference  amid  the  noise  and  non- 
sense of  Edinburgh.'  When  he  left  this  romantic  city 
his  thoughts  were  not  of  the  honour  its  citizens  had  done 


94  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

him,  but  of  Jed's  crystal  stream  and  sylvan  banks,  and, 
above  all,  of  Miss  Lindsay,  who  brings  him  to  the  verge 
of  verse.  Thereafter  he  visited  Kelso,  Melrose,  and 
Selkirk,  and  after  spending  about  three  weeks  seeing 
all  that  was  to  be  seen  in  this  beautiful  country-side, 
he  set  off  with  a  Mr.  Ker  and  a  Mr.  Hood  on  a  visit  to 
England.  In  this  visit  he  went  as  far  as  Newcastle,  re- 
turning by  way  of  Hexham  and  Carlisle.  After  spend- 
ing a  day  here  he  proceeded  to  Annan,  and  thence  to 
Dumfries.  Whilst  in  the  Nithsdale  district  he  took  the 
opportunity  of  visiting  Dalswinton  and  inspecting  the 
unoccupied  farms;  but  he  did  not  immediately  close 
with  Mr.  Miller's  generous  offer  of  a  four-nineteen  years' 
lease  on  his  own  terms.  From  Nithsdale  he  turned 
again  to  his  native  Ayrshire,  arriving  at  Mossgiel  in  the 
beginning  of  June,  after  an  absence  from  home  of  six 
eventful  months. 

We  can  hardly  imagine  what  this  home-coming  would 
be  like.  The  Burnses  were  typical  Scots  in  their  un- 
demonstrative ways ;  but  this  was  a  great  occasion,  and 
tradition  has  it  that  his  mother  allowed  her  feeling  so  far 
to  overcome  her  natural  reticence  that  she  met  him  at 
the  threshold  with  the  exclamation,  *O  Robert!'  He 
had  left  home  almost  unknown,  and  had  returned  with  a 
name  that  was  known  and  honoured  from  end  to  end  of 
his  native  land.  He  had  left  in  the  direst  poverty,  and 
haunted  with  the  terrors  of  a  jail,  now  he  came  back 
with  his  fortune  assured ;  if  not  actually  rich,  at  least 
with  more  money  due  to  him  than  the  family  had  ever 
dreamed  of  possessing.  The  mother's  excess  of  feeling 
on  such  an  occasion  as  this  may  be  easily  understood 
and  excused. 


ROBERT  BURNS  95 

Of  this  Border  tour  Burns  kept  a  scrappy  journal,  but 
he  was  more  concerned  in  jotting  down  the  names  and 
characteristics  of  those  with  whom  he  forgathered  than 
of  letting  himself  out  in  snatches  of  song.  He  makes 
shrewd  remarks  by  the  way  on  farms  and  farming,  on 
the  washing  and  shearing  of  sheep,  but  the  only  verse 
he  attempted  was  his  Epistle  to  Creech.  He  who  had 
longed  to  sit  and  muse  on  '  those  once  hard-contested 
fields'  did  not  go  out  of  his  way  to  look  on  Ancrum 
Moor  or  Philiphaugh,  nor  do  we  read  of  him  musing 
pensive  in  Yarrow. 

However,  we  are  not  to  regard  these  days  as  altogether 
barren.  The  poet  was  gathering  impressions  which 
would  come  forth  in  song  at  some  future  time. 
'  Neither  the  fine  scenery  nor  the  lovely  women,' 
Cunningham  regrets,  'produced  any  serious  effect  on 
his  muse.7  This  is  a  rash  statement.  Poets  do  not 
sow  and  reap  at  the  same  time — not  even  Burns.  If 
his  friends  were  disappointed  at  what  they  considered 
the  sterility  of  his  muse  on  this  occasion,  the  fault  did 
not  lie  with  the  poet,  but  with  their  absurd  expectations. 
It  may  be  as  well  to  point  out  here  that  the  greatest 
harm  Edinburgh  did  to  Burns  was  that  it  gathered  round 
him  a  number  of  impatient  and  injudicious  admirers 
who  could  not  understand  that  poetry  was  not  to  be 
forced.  The  burst  of  poetry  that  practically  filled  the 
Kilmarnock  Edition  came  after  a  seven  years'  growth  of 
inspiration;  but  after  his  first  visit  to  Edinburgh  he 
was  never  allowed  to  rest.  It  was  expected  that  he 
should  write  whenever  a  subject  was  suggested,  or  burst 
into  verse  at  the  first  glimpse  of  a  lovely  landscape. 
Every  friend  was  ready  with  advice  as  to  how  and  what 


96  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

he  should  write,  and  quite  as  ready,  the  poet  un- 
fortunately knew,  to  criticise  afterwards.  The  poetry 
of  the  Mossgiel  period  had  come  from  him  spontaneously. 
He  had  flung  off  impressions  in  verse  fearlessly,  without 
pausing  to  consider  how  his  work  would  be  appreciated 
by  this  one  or  denounced  by  that;  and  was  true  to 
himself.  Now  he  knew  that  every  verse  he  wrote  would 
be  read  by  many  eyes,  studied  by  many  minds;  some 
would  scent  heresy,  others  would  spot  Jacobitism,  or 
worse,  freedom;  some  would  suspect  his  morality, 
others  would  deplore  his  Scots  tongue ;  all  would  criti- 
cise favourably  or  adversely  his  poetic  expression.  It 
has  to  be  kept  in  mind,  too,  that  Burns  at  this  time 
was  in  no  mood  for  writing  poetry.  His  mind  was 
not  at  ease ;  and  after  his  long  spell  of  inspiration  and 
the  fatiguing  distractions  of  Edinburgh,  it  was  hardly  to 
be  wondered  at  that  brain  and  body  were  alike  in  need 
of  rest.  The  most  natural  rest  would  have  been  a 
return  direct  to  the  labours  of  the  farm.  That,  how- 
ever, was  denied  him,  and  the  period  of  his  journeyings 
was  little  else  than  a  season  of  unsettlement  and 
suspense. 

Burns  only  stayed  a  few  days  at  home,  and  then  set 
off  on  a  tour  to  the  West  Highlands,  a  tour  of  which 
we  know  little  or  nothing.  Perhaps  this  was  merely  a 
pilgrimage  to  the  grave  of  Highland  Mary.  We  do 
not  know,  and  need  not  curiously  inquire.  Burns,  as 
has  been  already  remarked,  kept  sacred  his  love  for 
this  generous-hearted  maiden,  hidden  away  in  his  own 
heart,  and  the  whole  story  is  a  beautiful  mystery.  We 
do  know  that  before  he  left  he  visited  the  Armours, 
and  was  disgusted  with  the  changed  attitude  of  the 


ROBERT  BURNS  97 

family  towards  himself.  '  If  anything  had  been  want- 
ing,' he  wrote  to  Mr.  James  Smith,  'to  disgust  me 
completely  at  Armour's  family,  their  mean,  servile  com- 
pliance would  have  done  it.'  To  his  friend,  William 
Nicol,  he  wrote  in  the  same  strain.  *  I  never,  my 
friend,  thought  mankind  very  capable  of  anything 
generous ;  but  the  stateliness  of  the  patricians  in  Edin- 
burgh, and  the  servility  of  my  plebeian  brethren  (who 
perhaps  formerly  eyed  me  askance)  since  I  returned 
home,  have  nearly  put  me  out  of  conceit  altogether  with 
my  species.' 

This  shows  Burns  in  no  very  enviable  frame  of  mind ; 
but  the  cause  is  obvious.  He  is  as  yet  unsettled  in 
life,  and  now  that  he  has  met  again  his  Bonnie  Jean, 
and  seen  his  children,  he  is  more  than  ever  dissatisfied 
with  aimless  roving.  '  I  have  yet  fixed  on  nothing  with 
respect  to  the  serious  business  of  life.  I  am  just  as 
usual  a  rhyming,  mason-making,  raking,  aimless,  idle 
fellow.  However,  I  shall  somewhere  have  a  farm  soon. 
I  was  going  to  say  a  wife  too,  but  that  must  never  be 
my  blessed  lot.' 

To  his  own  folks  he  was  nothing  but  kindness,  ready 
to  share  with  them  his  uttermost  farthing,  and  to  have 
them  share  in  the  glory  that  was  his;  but  he  was  at 
enmity  with  himself,  and  at  war  with  the  world.  Like 
Hamlet,  who  felt  keenly,  but  was  incapable  of  action,  he 
saw  that  *  the  times  were  out  of  joint ' ;  circumstances 
were  too  strong  for  him.  Almost  the  only  record  we 
have  of  this  tour  is  a  vicious  epigram  on  what  he  con- 
sidered the  flunkeyism  of  Inveraray.  Nor  are  we  in  the 
least  astonished  to  hear  that  on  the  homeward  route  he 
spent  a  night  in  dancing  and  boisterous  revel,  ushering 
7 


98  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

in  the  day  with  a  kind  of  burlesque  of  pagan  sun- 
worship.  This  was  simply  a  reaction  from  his  gloom 
and  despondency  j  he  sought  to  forget  himself  in  reckless 
conviviality. 

About  the  end  of  July  we  find  him  back  again  in 
Mauchline,  and  on  the  25th  May  he  set  out  on  a 
Highland  tour  along  with  his  friend  William  Nicol,  one 
of  the  masters  of  the  High  School.  Of  this  man  Dr. 
Currie  remarks  that  he  rose  by  the  strength  of  his 
talents,  and  fell  by  the  strength  of  his  passions.  Burns 
was  perfectly  well  aware  of  the  passionate  and  quarrelsome 
nature  of  the  man.  He  compared  himself  with  such  a 
companion  to  one  travelling  with  a  loaded  blunderbuss 
at  full-cock ;  and  in  his  epigrammatic  way  he  said  of  him 
to  Mr.  Walker,  *  His  mind  is  like  his  body  j  he  has  a 
confounded,  strong,  in-kneed  sort  of  a  soul.'  The  man, 
however,  had  some  good  qualities.  He  had  a  warm 
heart ;  never  forgot  the  friends  of  his  early  years,  and 
he  hated  vehemently  low  jealousy  and  cunning.  These 
were  qualities  that  would  appeal  strongly  to  Burns,  and 
on  account  of  which  much  would  be  forgiven.  Still  we 
cannot  think  that  the  poet  was  happy  in  his  companion ; 
nor  was  he  yet  happy  in  himself.  Otherwise  the  High- 
land tour  might  have  been  more  interesting,  certainly 
much  more  profitable  to  the  poet  in  its  results,  than  it 
actually  proved. 

In  his  diary  of  this  tour,  as  in  his  diary  of  the  Border 
tour,  there  is  much  more  of  shrewd  remark  on  men 
and  things  than  of  poetical  jottings.  The  fact  is,  poetry 
is  not  to  be  collected  in  jottings,  nor  is  inspiration  to 
be  culled  in  catalogue  cuttings ;  and  if  many  of  his 
friends  were  again  disappointed  in  the  immediate 


ROBERT  BURNS  99 

poetical  results  of  this  holiday,  it  only  shows  how 
little  they  understood  the  comings  and  goings  of  in- 
spiration. Those,  however,  who  read  his  notes  and 
reflections  carefully  and  intelligently  are  bound  to  notice 
how  much  more  than  a  mere  verse-maker  Burns  was. 
This  was  the  journal  of  a  man  of  strong,  sound  sense 
and  keen  observation.  It  has  also  to  be  recognised  that 
Burns  was  at  his  weakest  when  he  attempted  to  describe 
scenery  for  mere  scenery's  sake.  His  gift  did  not  lie 
that  way.  His  landscapes,  rich  in  colour  and  deftly 
drawn  though  they  be,  are  always  the  mere  backgrounds 
of  his  pictures.  They  are  impressionistic  sketches,  the 
setting  and  the  complement  of  something  of  human 
interest  in  incident  or  feeling. 

The  poet  and  his  companion  set  out  in  a  postchaise, 
journeying  by  Linlithgow  and  Falkirk  to  Stirling.  They 
visited  'a  dirty,  ugly  place  called  Borrowstounness,' 
where  he  turned  from  the  town  to  look  across  the  Forth 
to  Dunfermline  and  the  fertile  coast  of  Fife;  Carron 
Iron  Works,  and  the  field  of  Bannockburn.  They  were 
shown  the  hole  where  Bruce  set  his  standard,  and  the 
sight  fired  the  patriotic  ardour  of  the  poet  till  he  saw  in 
imagination  the  two  armies  again  in  the  thick  of  battle. 
After  visiting  the  castle  at  Stirling,  he  left  Nicol  for  a 
day,  and  paid  a  visit  to  Mrs.  Chalmers  of  Harvieston. 
*  Go  to  see  Caudron  Linn  and  Rumbling  Brig  and  Deil's 
Mill.'  That  is  all  he  has  to  say  of  the  scenery ;  but  in 
a  letter  to  Gavin  Hamilton  he  has  much  more  to  tell 
of  Grace  Chalmers  and  Charlotte,  'who  is  not  only 
beautiful  but  lovely.' 

From  Stirling  the  tourists  proceeded  northwards  by 
Crieff  and  Glenalmond  to  Taymouth ;  thence,  keeping 


ioo  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

by  the  banks  of  the  river,  to  Aberfeldy,  whose  birks  he 
immortalised  in  song.  Here  he  had  the  good  fortune 
to  meet  Niel  Gow  and  to  hear  him  playing.  '  A  short, 
stout-built,  honest,  Highland  figure,'  the  poet  describes 
him,  'with  his  greyish  hair  shed  on  his  honest,  social 
brow — an  interesting  face,  marking  strong  sense,  kind 
open-heartedness  mixed  with  unmistaking  simplicity.' 

By  the  Tummel  they  rode  to  Blair,  going  by  Fascally 
and  visiting — both  those  sentimental  Jacobites — 'the 
gallant  Lord  Dundee's  stone,'  in  the  Pass  of  Killie- 
crankie.  At  Blair  he  met  his  friend  Mr.  Walker,  who 
has  left  an  account  of  the  poet's  visit ;  while  the  two 
days  which  Burns  spent  here,  he  has  declared,  were 
among  the  happiest  days  of  his  life. 

*  My  curiosity,'  Walker  wrote,  '  was  great  to  see  how 
he  would  conduct  himself  in  company  so  different  from 
what  he  had  been  accustomed  to.  His  manner  was 
unembarrassed,  plain,  and  firm.  He  appeared  to  have 
complete  reliance  on  his  own  native  good  sense  for 
directing  his  behaviour.  He  seemed  at  once  to  per- 
ceive and  appreciate  what  was  due  to  the  company  and 
to  himself,  and  never  to  forget  a  proper  respect  for  the 
separate  species  of  dignity  belonging  to  each.  He  did 
not  arrogate  conversation,  but  when  led  into  it  he  spoke 
with  ease,  propriety,  and  manliness.  He  tried  to  exert 
his  abilities,  because  he  knew  it  was  ability  alone  gave 
him  a  title  to  be  there.' 

Burns  certainly  enjoyed  his  stay,  and  would,  at  the 
family's  earnest  solicitation,  have  stayed  longer,  had  the 
irascible  and  unreasonable  Nicol  allowed  it.  Here  it 
was  he  met  Mr.  Graham  of  Fintry,  and  if  he  had  stayed 
a  day  or  two  longer  he  would  have  met  Dundas,  a  man 


ROBERT  BURNS  101 

whose  patronage  might  have  done  much  to  help  the 
future  fortunes  of  the  poet.  After  leaving  Blair,  he 
visited,  at  the  Duke's  advice,  the  Falls  of  Bruar,  and  a 
few  days  afterwards  he  wrote  from  Inverness  to  Mr. 
Walker  enclosing  his  verses,  The  Humble  Petition  of 
Bruar  Water  to  the  Noble  Duke  of  Athole. 

Leaving  Blair,  they  continued  their  journey  northwards 
towards  Inverness,  viewing  on  the  way  the  Falls  of 
Foyers, — soon  to  be  lost  to  Scotland, — which  the  poet 
celebrated  in  a  fragment  of  verse.  Of  course  two  such 
Jacobites  had  to  see  Culloden  Moor;  then  they  came 
through  Nairn  and  Elgin,  crossed  the  Spey  at  Fochabers, 
and  Burns  dined  at  Gordon  Castle,  the  seat  of  the 
lively  Duchess  of  Gordon,  whom  he  had  met  in 
Edinburgh.  Here  again  he  was  received  with  marked 
respect,  and  treated  with  the  same  Highland  hospitality 
that  had  so  charmed  him  at  Blair;  and  here  also 
the  pleasure  of  the  whole  party  was  spoilt  by  the 
ill-natured  jealousy  of  Nicol.  That  fiery  dominie, 
imagining  that  he  was  slighted  by  Burns,  who  seemed 
to  prefer  the  fine  society  of  the  Duchess  and  her  friends 
to  his  amiable  companionship,  ordered  the  horses  to 
be  put  to  the  carriage,  and  determined  to  set  off  alone. 
As  the  spiteful  fellow  would  listen  to  no  reason,  Burns 
had  e'en  to  accompany  him,  though  much  against  his 
will.  He  sent  his  apologies  to  Her  Grace  in  a  song  in 
praise  of  Castle  Gordon. 

From  Fochabers  they  drove  to  Banff,  and  thence  to 
Aberdeen.  In  this  city  he  was  introduced  to  the  Rev. 
John  Skinner,  a  son  of  the  author  of  Tullochgorum,  and 
was  exceedingly  disappointed  when  he  learned  that  on 
his  journey  he  had  been  quite  near  to  the  father's 


102  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

parsonage,  and  had  not  called  on  the  old  man.  Mr. 
Skinner  himself  regretted  this,  when  he  learned  the 
fact  from  his  son,  as  keenly  as  Burns  did;  but  the 
incident  led  to  a  correspondence  between  the  two 
poets.  From  Aberdeen  he  came  south  by  Stonehaven, 
where  he  '  met  his  relations/  and  Montrose  to  Dundee. 
Hence  the  journey  was  continued  through  Perth,  Kin- 
ross, and  Queensferry,  and  so  back  to  Edinburgh,  i6th 
September  1787. 

His  letter  to  his  brother  from  Edinburgh  is  more 
meagre  even  than  his  journal,  being  simply  a  catalogue 
of  the  places  visited.  '  Warm  as  I  was  from  Ossian's 
country,'  he  remarks,  '  what  cared  I  for  fishing  towns  or 
fertile  carses?'  Yet  although  the  journal  reads  now 
and  again  like  a  railway  time-table,  we  come  across 
references  which  give  proof  of  the  poet's  abounding 
interest  in  the  locality  of  Scottish  Song;  and  it  was 
probably  the  case,  as  Professor  Blackie  writes,  that 
'  such  a  lover  of  the  pure  Scottish  Muse  could  not  fail 
when  wandering  from  glen  to  glen  to  pick  up  fragments 
of  traditional  song,  which,  without  his  sympathetic  touch, 
would  probably  have  been  lost.' 

Burns's  wanderings  were  not  yet,  however,  at  an  end. 
Probably  he  had  expected  on  his  return  to  Edinburgh 
some  settlement  with  Creech,  and  was  disappointed. 
Perhaps  he  was  eager  to  revisit  some  places  or  people 
— Peggy  Chalmers,  no  doubt — without  being  hampered 
in  his  movements  by  such  a"  companion  as  Nicol. 
Anyhow,  we  find  him  setting  out  again  on  a  tour 
through  Clackmannan  and  Perthshire  with  his  friend 
Dr.  Adair,  a  warm  but  somewhat  injudicious  admirer 
of  the  poet's  genius.  It  was  probably  about  the 


ROBERT  BURNS  103 

beginning  of  October  that  the  two  left  Edinburgh,  going 
round  by  Stirling  to  Harvieston,  where  they  remained 
about  ten  days,  and  made  excursions  to  the  various 
parts  of  the  surrounding  scenery.  The  Caldron  Linn 
and  Rumbling  Bridge  were  revisited,  and  they  went  to 
see  Castle  Campbell,  the  ancient  seat  of  the  family  of 
Argyle.  '  I  am  surprised/  the  doctor  ingenuously  re- 
marks, 'that  none  of  these  scenes  should  have  called 
forth  an  exertion  of  Burns's  muse.  But  I  doubt  if  he 
had  much  taste  for  the  picturesque.'  One  wonders 
whether  Dr.  Adair  had  actually  read  the  published 
poems.  What  a  picture  it  must  have  been  to  see  the 
party  dragging  Burns  about,  pointing  out  the  best  views, 
and  then  breathlessly  waiting  for  a  torrent  of  verse. 
The  verses  came  afterwards,  but  they  were  addressed, 
not  to  the  Ochils  or  the  Devon,  but  to  Peggy  Chalmers. 

From  Harvieston  he  went  to  Ochtertyre  on  the 
Teith  to  visit  Mr.  Ramsay,  a  reputed  lover  of  Scottish 
literature;  and  thence  he  proceeded  to  Ochtertyre  in 
Strathearn,  in  order  to  visit  Sir  William  Murray. 

In  a  letter  to  Dr.  Currie,  Mr.  Ramsay  speaks  thus  of 
Burns  on  this  visit :  '  I  have  been  in  the  company  of 
many  men  of  genius,  some  of  them  poets,  but  never 
witnessed  such  flashes  of  intellectual  brightness,  the 
impulse  of  the  moment,  sparks  of  celestial  fire !  I 
never  was  more  delighted,  therefore,  than  with  his  com- 
pany for  two  days'  tete-h-tete?  Of  his  residence  with  Sir 
William  Murray  he  has  left  two  poetical  souvenirs,  one 
On  Scaring  some  Water  Fowl  in  Loch  Turit,  and  the 
other,  a  love  song,  Blithe,  Blithe,  and  Merry  was  She, 
in  honour  of  Miss  Euphemia  Murray,  the  flower  of 
Strathearn. 


104  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Returning  to  Harvieston,  he  went  back  with  Dr. 
Adair  to  Edinburgh,  by  Kinross  and  Queensferry.  At 
Dunfermline  he  visited  the  ruined  abbey,  where,  kneel- 
ing, he  kissed  the  stone  above  Bruce's  grave. 

It  was  on  this  tour,  too,  that  he  visited  at  Clack- 
mannan an  old  Scottish  lady,  who  claimed  to  be  a 
lineal  descendant  of  the  family  of  Robert  the  Bruce. 
She  conferred  knighthood  on  the  poet  with  the  great 
double-handed  sword  of  that  monarch,  and  is  said  to 
have  delighted  him  with  the  toast  she  gave  after  dinner, 
*  Hooi  Uncos/  which  means  literally,  *  Away  Strangers,' 
and  politically  much  more. 

The  year  1787  was  now  drawing  to  a  close,  and  Burns 
was  still  waiting  for  a  settlement  with  Creech.  He  could 
not  understand  why  he  was  kept  hanging  on  from  month 
to  month.  This  was  a  way  of  doing  business  quite  new 
to  him,  and  after  being  put  off  again  and  again  he  at  last 
began  to  suspect  that  there  was  something  wrong.  He 
doubted  Creech's  solvency;  doubted  even  his  honesty. 
More  than  ever  was  he  eager  to  be  settled  in  life,  and 
he  fretted  under  commercial  delays  he  could  not  under- 
stand. On  the  first  day  of  his  return  to  Edinburgh  he 
had  written  to  Mr.  Miller  of  Dalswinton,  telling  him  of 
his  ambitions,  and  making  an  offer  to  rent  one  of  his 
farms.  We  know  that  he  visited  Dalswinton  once  or 
twice,  but  returned  to  Edinburgh.  His  only  comfort  at 
this  time  was  the  work  he  had  begun  in  collecting 
Scottish  songs  for  Johnson's  Museum ;  touching  up  old 
ones  and  writing  new  ones  to  old  airs.  This  with  Burns 
was  altogether  a  labour  of  love.  The  idea  of  writing  a  song 
with  a  view  to  money-making  was  abhorrent  to  him.  c  He 
entered  into  the  views  of  Johnson,'  writes  Chambers, '  with 


ROBERT  BURNS  105 

an  industry  and  earnestness  which  despised  all  money 
considerations,  and  which  money  could  not  have  pur- 
chased ' ;  while  Allan  Cunningham  marvels  at  the  number 
of  songs  Burns  was  able  to  write  at  a  time  when  a  sort  of 
civil  war  was  going  on  between  him  and  Creech.  An- 
other reason  for  staying  through  the  winter  in  Edinburgh 
Burns  may  have  had  in  the  hope  that  through  the  in- 
fluence of  his  aristocratic  friends  some  office  of  profit, 
and  not  unworthy  his  genius,  might  have  been  found  for 
him.  Places  of  profit  and  honour  were  at  the  disposal 
of  many  who  might  have  helped  him  had  they  so  wished. 
But  Burns  was  not  now  the  favourite  he  had  been  when 
he  first  came  to  Edinburgh.  The  ploughman-poet  was 
no  longer  a  novelty ;  and,  moreover,  Burns  had  the  pride 
of  his  class,  and  clung  to  his  early  friends.  It  is  not 
possible  for  a  man  to  be  the  boon-companion  of  peasants 
and  the  associate  of  peers.  Had  he  dissociated  himself 
altogether  from  his  past  life,  the  doors  of  the  nobility  might 
have  been  still  held  open  to  him;  and  no  doubt  the 
cushioned  ease  of  a  sinecure's  office  would  have  been 
had  for  the  asking.  But  in  that  case  he  would  have  lost 
his  manhood,  and  we  should  have  lost  a  poet.  Burns 
would  not  have  turned  his  back  on  his  fellows  for  the 
most  lucrative  office  in  the  kingdom;  that,  he  would 
have  considered  as  selling  his  soul  to  the  devil.  Yet,  on 
the  other  hand,  what  could  any  of  these  men  do  for  a 
poet  who  was  *  owre  blate  to  seek,  owre  proud  to  snool '  ? 
Burns  waited  on  in  the  expectation  that  those  who  had 
the  power  would  take  it  upon  themselves  to  do  some- 
thing for  him.  Perhaps  he  credited  them  with  a  sense 
and  a  generosity  they  could  not  lay  claim  to;  though 
had  one  of  them  taken  the  initiative  in  this  matter,  he 


io6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

would  have  honoured  himself  in  honouring  Burns,  and 
endeared  his  name  to  the  hearts  of  his  countrymen 
for  all  time.  But  such  offices  are  created  and  kept 
open  for  political  sycophants,  who  can  importune  with 
years  of  prostituted  service.  They  are  for  those 
who  advocate  the  opinions  of  others ;  certainly  not  for 
the  man  who  dares  to  speak  fearlessly  his  own  mind, 
and  to  assert  the  privileges  and  prerogatives  of  his 
manhood.  The  children's  bread  is  not  to  be  thrown 
to  the  dogs.  Burns  asked  for  nothing,  and  got  nothing. 
The  Excise  commission  which  he  applied  for,  and 
graduated  for,  was  granted.  The  work  was  laborious, 
the  remuneration  small,  and  ganger  was  a  name  of 
contempt. 

But  whilst  waiting  on  in  the  hope  of  something 
1  turning  up,'  he  was  still  working  busily  for  Johnson's 
Museum,  and  still  trying  to  bring  Creech  to  make  a 
settlement.  At  last,  however,  out  of  all  patience  with 
his  publisher,  and  recognising  the  futility  of  his  hopes  of 
preferment,  he  had  resolved  early  in  December  to  leave 
Edinburgh,  when  he  was  compelled  to  stay  against  his 
will.  A  double  accident  befell  him ;  he  was  introduced 
to  a  Mrs.  Maclehose,  and  three  days  afterwards,  through 
the  carelessness  of  a  drunken  coachman,  he  was  thrown 
from  a  carriage,  and  had  his  knee  severely  bruised. 
The  latter  was  an  accident  that  kept  him  confined  to 
his  room  for  a  time,  and  from  which  he  quickly  re- 
covered; but  the  meeting  with  Mrs.  Maclehose  was  a 
serious  matter,  and  for  both,  most  unfortunate  in  its 
results. 

It  was  while  he  was  'on  the  rack  of  his  present  agony ' 
that  the  Sylvander-Clarinda  correspondence  was  begun 


ROBERT  BURNS  107 

and  continued.  That  much  may  be  said  in  excuse  for 
Burns.  A  man,  especially  one  with  the  passion  and 
sensitiveness  of  a  poet,  cannot  be  expected  to  write  in  all 
sanity  when  he  is  racked  by  the  pain  of  an  injured  limb. 
Certainly  the  poet  does  not  show  up  in  a  pleasant  light  in 
this  absurd  interchange  of  gasping  epistles ;  nor  does  Mrs. 
Maclehose.  *I  like  the  idea  of  Arcadian  names  in  a 
commerce  of  this  kind,'  he  unguardedly  admits.  The 
most  obvious  comment  that  occurs  to  the  mind  of 
the  reader  is  that  they  ought  never  to  have  been 
written.  It  is  a  pity  they  were  written;  more  than  a 
pity  they  were  ever  published.  It  seems  a  terrible 
thing  that,  merely  to  gratify  the  morbid  curiosity  of  the 
world,  the  very  love-letters  of  a  man  of  genius  should 
be  made  public.  Is  there  nothing  sacred  in  the  lives 
of  our  great  men  ?  '  Did  I  imagine,'  Burns  remarked 
to  Mrs.  Basil  Montagu  in  Dumfries,  '  that  one  half  of  the 
letters  which  I  have  written  would  be  published  when 
I  die,  I  would  this  moment  recall  them  and  burn 
them  without  redemption.' 

After  all,  what  was  gained  by  publishing  this  corre- 
spondence ?  It  adds  literally  nothing  to  our  knowledge 
of  the  poet.  He  could  have,  and  has,  given  more  of 
himself  in  a  verse  than  he  gives  in  the  whole  series 
of  letters  signed  Sylvander.  Occasionally  he  is  natural 
in  them,  but  rarely.  'I  shall  certainly  be  ashamed  of 
scrawling  whole  sheets  of  incoherence.'  We  trust  he 
was.  The  letters  are  false  in  sentiment,  stilted  in 
diction,  artificial  in  morality.  We  have  a  picture  of  the 
poet  all  through  trying  to  batter  himself  into  a  passion 
he  does  not  feel,  into  love  of  an  accomplished  and  in- 
tellectual woman ;  while  in  his  heart's  core  is  registered 


io8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  image  of  Jean  Armour,  the  mother  of  his  children. 
He  shows  his  paces  before  Clarinda  and  tears  passion  to 
tatters  in  inflated  prose ;  he  poses  as  a  stylist,  a  moralist, 
a  religious  enthusiast,  a  poet,  a  man  of  the  world,  and 
now  and  again  accidentally  he  assumes  the  face  and  figure 
of  Robert  Burns.  We  read  and  wonder  if  this  be  really 
the  same  man  who  wrote  in  his  journal,  '  The  whining 
cant  of  love,  except  in  real  passion  and  by  a  masterly 
hand,  is  to  me  as  insufferable  as  the  preaching  cant  of 
old  father  Smeaton,  Whig  minister  at  Kilmaurs.  Darts, 
flames,  cupids,  love  graces  and  all  that  farrago  are  just 
...  a  senseless  rabble.' 

Clarinda  comes  out  of  the  correspondence  better  than 
Sylvander.  Her  letters  are  more  natural  and  vastly 
more  clever.  She  grieves  to  hear  of  his  accident,  and 
sympathises  with  him  in  his  suffering  ;  were  she  his  sister 
she  would  call  and  see  him.  He  is  too  romantic  in  his 
style  of  address,  and  must  remember  she  is  a  married 
woman.  Would  he  wait  like  Jacob  seven  years  for  a 
wife  ?  And  perhaps  be  disappointed  !  She  is  not  un- 
happy :  religion  has  been  her  balm  for  every  woe.  She 
had  read  his  autobiography  as  Desdemona  listened  to 
the  narration  of  Othello,  but  she  was  pained  because  of 
his  hatred  of  Calvinism;  he  must  study  it  seriously. 
She  could  well  believe  him  when  he  said  that  no  woman 
could  love  as  ardently  as  himself.  The  only  woman 
for  him  would  be  one  qualified  for  the  companion,  the 
friend,  and  the  mistress.  The  last  might  gain  Sylvander, 
but  the  others  alone  could  keep  him.  She  admires  him 
for  his  continued  fondness  for  Jean,  who  perhaps  does 
not  possess  his  tenderest,  faithfulest  friendship.  How 
could  that  bonnie  lassie  refuse  him  after  such  proofs  of 


ROBERT  BURNS  109 

love  ?  But  he  must  not  rave ;  he  must  limit  himself  to 
friendship.  The  evening  of  their  third  meeting  was  one 
of  the  most  exquisite  she  had  ever  experienced.  Only 
he  must  now  know  she  has  faults.  She  means  well,  but 
is  liable  to  become  the  victim  of  her  sensibility.  She 
too  now  prefers  the  religion  of  the  bosom.  She  cannot 
deny  his  power  over  her :  would  he  pay  another  evening 
visit  on  Saturday  ? 

When  the  poet  is  leaving  Edinburgh,  Clarinda  is  heart- 
broken. '  Oh,  let  the  scenes  of  nature  remind  you  of 
Clarinda  !  In  winter,  remember  the  dark  shades  of  her 
fate ;  in  summer,  the  warmth  of  her  friendship ;  in 
autumn,  her  glowing  wishes  to  bestow  plenty  on  all ;  and 
let  spring  animate  you  with  hopes  that  your  friend  may 
yet  surmount  the  wintry  blasts  of  life,  and  revive  to  taste 
a  spring-time  of  happiness.  At  all  events,  Sylvander, 
the  storms  of  life  will  quickly  pass,  and  one  unbounded 
spring  encircle  all.  Love,  there,  is  not  a  crime.  I 
charge  you  to  meet  me  there,  O  God  1  I  must  lay  down 
my  pen.' 

Poor  Clarinda  !  Well  for  her  peace  of  mind  that  the 
poet  was  leaving  her  j  well  for  Burns,  also,  that  he  was 
leaving  Clarinda  and  Edinburgh.  Only  one  thing 
remained  for  both  to  do,  and  it  had  been  wise,  to  burn 
their  letters.  Would  that  Clarinda  had  been  as  much 
alive  to  her  own  good  name,  and  the  poet's  fair  fame,  as 
Peggy  Chalmers,  who  did  not  preserve  her  letters  from 
Burns ! 

It  was  February  1788  before  Burns  could  settle  with 
Creech ;  and,  after  discharging  all  expenses,  he  found  a 
balance  in  his  favour  of  about  five  hundred  pounds.  To 
Gilbert,  who  was  in  sore  need  of  the  money,  he  advanced 


i  io  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

one  hundred  and  eighty  pounds,  as  his  contribution  to 
the  support  of  their  mother.  With  what  remained  of 
the  money  he  leased  from  Mr.  Miller  of  Dalswinton 
the  farm  of  Ellisland,  on  which  he  entered  at  Whit- 
sunday 1788. 


CHAPTER    VII 

ELLISLAND 

WHEN  Burns  turned  his  back  on  Edinburgh  in  Feb- 
ruary 1788,  and  set  his  face  resolutely  towards  his  native 
county  and  the  work  that  awaited  him,  he  left  the  city  a 
happier  and  healthier  man  than  he  had  been  all  the 
months  of  his  sojourn  in  it.  The  times  of  aimless  roving, 
and  of  still  more  demoralising  hanging  on  in  the  hope  of 
something  being  done  for  him,  were  at  an  end  ;  he  looked 
to  the  future  with  self-reliance.  His  vain  hopes  of  pre- 
ferment were  already  *  thrown  behind  and  far  away,'  and 
he  saw  clearly  that  by  the  labour  of  his  own  hands  he 
had  to  live,  independent  of  the  dispensations  of  patron- 
age, and  trusting  no  longer  to  the  accidents  of  fortune. 
*  The  thoughts  of  a  home,'  to  quote  Cunningham's  words, 
c  of  a  settled  purpose  in  life,  gave  him  a  silent  gladness 
of  heart  such  as  he  had  never  before  known.' 

Burns,  though  he  had  hoped  and  was  disappointed, 
left  the  city  not  so  much  with  bitterness  as  with  contempt. 
If  he  had  been  received  on  this  second  visit  with  punctil- 
ious politeness,  more  ceremoniously  than  cordially,  it 
was  just  as  he  had  himself  expected.  Gossip,  too,  had 
been  busy  while  he  was  absent,  and  his  sayings  and 
doings  had  been  bruited  abroad.  His  worst  fault  was 
that  he  was  a  shrewd  observer  of  men,  and  drew,  in  a 


ii2  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

memorandum  book  he  kept,  pen-portraits  of  the  people 
he  met  '  Dr  Blair  is  merely  an  astonishing  proof  of 
what  industry  and  application  can  do.  Natural  parts 
like  his  are  frequently  to  be  met  with ;  his  vanity  is  pro- 
verbially known  among  his  acquaintance/  The  Lord 
Advocate  he  pictured  in  a  verse  : 

'  He  clenched  his  pamphlets  in  his  fist, 

He  quoted  and  he  hinted, 
Till  in  a  declamation-mist, 

His  argument  he  tint  it. 
He  gap'd  for't,  he  grap'd  for't, 

He  fand  it  was  awa,  man ; 
But  what  his  common  sense  came  short, 

He  eked  it  out  wi'  law,  man.' 

Had  pen-portraits,  such  as  these,  been  merely  carica- 
tures, they  might  have  been  forgiven ;  but,  unfortunately, 
they  were  convincing  likenesses,  therefore  libels.  We 
doubt  not,  as  Cunningham  tells  us,  that  the  literati  of 
Edinburgh  were  not  displeased  when  such  a  man  left 
them ;  they  could  never  feel  at  their  ease  so  long  as  he 
was  in  their  midst.  *  Nor  were  the  titled  part  of  the 
community  without  their  share  in  this  silent  rejoicing ; 
his  presence  was  a  reproach  to  them.  The  illustrious 
of  his  native  land,  from  whom  he  had  looked  for  patron- 
age, had  proved  that  they  had  the  carcass  of  greatness, 
but  wanted  the  soul ;  they  subscribed  for  his  poems,  and 
looked  on  their  generosity  "  as  an  alms  could  keep  a  god 
alive."  He  turned  his  back  on  Edinburgh,  and  from  that 
time  forward  scarcely  counted  that  man  his  friend  who 
spoke  of  titled  persons  in  his  presence.' 

It  was  with  feelings  of  relief,  also,  that  Burns  left  the 
super-scholarly  litterateurs  ;  '  white  curd  of  asses'  milk,' 
he  called  them ;  gentlemen  who  reminded  him  of  some 


ROBERT  BURNS  113 

spinsters  in  his  country  who  c  spin  their  thread  so  fine 
that  it  is  neither  fit  for  weft  nor  woof.'  To  such  men, 
recognising  only  the  culture  of  schools,  a  genius  like 
Burns  was  a  puzzle,  easier  dismissed  than  solved.  Burns 
saw  them,  in  all  their  tinsel  of  academic  tradition, 
through  and  through. 

Coming  from  Edinburgh  to  the  quiet  home-life  of 
Mossgiel  was  like  coming  out  of  the  vitiated  atmosphere 
of  a  ballroom  into  the  pure  and  bracing  air  of  early 
morning.  Away  from  the  fever  of  city  life,  he  only 
gradually  comes  back  to  sanity  and  health.  The  artifi- 
cialities and  affectations  of  polite  society  are  not  to  be 
thrown  off  in  a  day's  time.  Hardly  had  he  arrived  at 
Mauchline  before  he  penned  a  letter  to  Clarinda,  that 
simply  staggers  the  reader  with  the  shameless  and  heart- 
less way  in  which  it  speaks  of  Jean  Armour.  '  I  am 
dissatisfied  with  her — I  cannot  endure  her  !  I,  while  my 
heart  smote  me  for  the  profanity,  tried  to  compare  her 
with  my  Clarinda.  'Twas  setting  the  expiring  glimmer 
of  a  farthing  taper  beside  the  cloudless  glory  of  the 
meridian  sun.  Here  was  tasteless  insipidity,  vulgarity 
of  soul,  and  mercenary  fawning;  there,  polished  good 
sense,  heaven-born  genius,  and  the  most  generous,  the 
most  delicate,  the  most  tender  passion.  I  have  done 
with  her,  and  she  with  me.' 

Poor  Jean !  Think  of  her  too  confiding  and  trustful 
love  written  down  mercenary  fawning  \  But  this  was  not 
Burns.  The  whole  letter  is  false  and  vulgar.  Perhaps 
he  thought  to  please  his  Clarinda  by  the  comparison; 
she  had  little  womanly  feeling  if  she  felt  flattered.  Let 
us  believe,  for  her  own  sake,  that  she  was  disgusted. 
His  letter  to  Ainslie,  ten  days  later,  is  something  very 
8 


H4  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

different,  though  even  yet  he  gives  no  hint  of  acknow- 
ledging Jean  as  his  wife.  '  Jean  I  found  banished  like  a 
martyr — forlorn,  destitute,  and  friendless — all  for  the 
good  old  cause.  I  have  reconciled  her  to  her  fate ;  I 
have  reconciled  her  to  her  mother ;  I  have  taken  her  a 
room ;  I  have  taken  her  to  my  arms ;  I  have  given  her  a 
guinea,  and  I  have  embraced  her  till  she  rejoiced  with 
joy  unspeakable  and  full  of  glory.' 

This  is  flippant  in  tone,  but  something  more  manly  in 
sentiment  \  Burns  was  coming  to  his  senses.  On  i3th 
June,  twin  girls  were  born  to  Jean,  but  they  only  lived 
a  few  days.  On  the  same  day  their  father  wrote  from 
Ellisland  to  Mrs.  Dunlop  a  letter,  in  which  we  see  the 
real  Burns,  true  to  the  best  feelings  of  his  nature,  and 
true  to  his  sorely-tried  and  long-suffering  wife.  '  This 
is  the  second  day,  my  honoured  friend,  that  I  have  been 
on  my  farm.  A  solitary  inmate  of  an  old  smoky  spence, 
far  from  every  object  I  love,  or  by  whom  I  am  beloved ; 
nor  any  acquaintance  older  than  yesterday,  except  Jenny 
Geddes,  the  old  mare  I  ride  on ;  while  uncouth  cares 
and  novel  plans  hourly  insult  my  awkward  ignorance  and 
bashful  inexperience.  .  .  .  Your  surmise,  madam,  is  just  j 
I  am,  indeed,  a  husband.  .  .  .  You  are  right  that  a 
bachelor  state  would  have  ensured  me  more  friends; 
but,  from  a  cause  you  will  easily  guess,  conscious  peace 
in  the  enjoyment  of  my  own  mind,  and  unmistrusting 
confidence  in  approaching  my  God,  would  seldom  have 
been  of  the  number.  I  found  a  once  much-loved  and 
still  much-loved  female,  literally  and  truly  cast  out  to  the 
mercy  of  the  naked  elements ;  but  I  enabled  her  to 
purchase  a  shelter, — there  is  no  sporting  with  a  fellow- 
creature's  happiness  or  misery.' 


ROBERT  BURNS  115 

It  was  not  till  August  that  the  marriage  was  ratified 
by  the  Church,  when  Robert  Burns  and  Jean  Armour 
were  rebuked  for  their  acknowledged  irregularity,  and 
admonished  '  to  adhere  faithfully  to  one  another,  as  man 
and  wife,  all  the  days  of  their  life.' 

This  was  the  only  fit  and  proper  ending  of  Burns's 
acquaintance  with  Jean  Armour.  As  an  honourable 
man,  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise  than  he  did. 
To  have  deserted  her  now,  and  married  another,  even 
admitting  he  was  legally  free  to  do  so,  which  is  doubtful, 
would  have  been  the  act  of  an  abandoned  wretch,  and 
certainly  have  wrought  ruin  in  the  moral  and  spiritual 
life  of  the  poet.  In  taking  Jean  as  his  wedded  wife,  he 
acted  not  only  honourably,  but  wisely ;  and  wisdom  and 
prudence  were  not  always  distinguishing  qualities  of 
Robert  Burns. 

Some  months  had  to  elapse,  however,  before  the  wife 
could  join  her  husband  at  Ellisland.  The  first  thing  he 
had  to  do  when  he  entered  on  his  lease  was  to  rebuild 
the  dwelling-house,  he  himself  lodging  in  the  meanwhile 
in  the  smoky  spence  which  he  mentions  in  his  letter  to 
Mrs.  Dunlop.  In  the  progress  of  the  building  he  not 
only  took  a  lively  interest,  but  actually  worked  with  his 
own  hands  as  a  labourer,  and  gloried  in  his  strength : 
'he  beat  all  for  a  dour  lift/  But  it  was  some  time 
before  he  could  settle  down  to  the  necessarily  mono- 
tonous work  of  farming.  'My  late  scenes  of  idleness 
and  dissipation,'  he  confessed  to  Dunbar,  'have  ener- 
vated my  mind  to  a  considerable  degree.'  He  was  rest- 
less and  rebellious  at  times,  and  we  are  not  surprised 
to  find  the  sudden  settling  down  from  gaiety  and  travel 
to  the  home-life  of  a  farmer  marked  by  bursts  of  im- 


n6  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

patience,  irritation,  and  discontent.  The  only  steadying 
influence  was  the  thought  of  his  wife  and  children,  and 
the  responsibility  of  a  husband  and  a  father.  He  grew 
despondent  occasionally,  and  would  gladly  have  been 
at  rest,  but  a  wife  and  children  bound  him  to  struggle 
with  the  stream.  His  melancholy  blinded  him  even  to 
the  good  qualities  of  his  neighbours.  The  only  things 
he  saw  in  perfection  were  stupidity  and  canting.  c  Prose 
they  only  know  in  graces,  prayers,  etc.,  and  the  value 
of  these  they  estimate,  as  they  do  their  plaiding  webs, 
by  the  ell.  As  for  the  Muses,  they  have  as  much  an 
idea  of  a  rhinoceros  as  of  a  poet/  He  was,  in  fact, 
ungracious  towards  his  neighbours,  not  that  they  were 
boorish  or  uninformed  folk,  but  simply  because,  though 
living  at  Ellisland  in  body,  his  mind  was  in  Ayrshire 
with  his  darling  Jean,  and  he  was  looking  to  the  future 
when  he  should  have  a  home  and  a  wife  of  his  own.  His 
eyes  would  ever  wander  to  the  west,  and  he  sang,  to 
cheer  him  in  his  loneliness,  a  song  of  love  to  his  Bonnie 
Jean: 

'  Of  a*  the  airts  the  wind  can  blaw, 

I  dearly  lo'e  the  west ; 
For  there  the  bonnie  lassie  lives, 

The  lassie  I  lo'e  best.' 

It  was  not  till  the  beginning  of  December  that  he  was 
in  a  position  to  bring  his  wife  and  children  to  Ellisland ; 
and  this  event  brought  him  into  kindlier  relations  with 
his  fellow-farmers.  His  neighbours  gathered  to  bid  his 
wife  welcome ;  and  drank  to  the  roof-tree  of  the  house 
of  Burns.  The  poet,  now  that  he  had  made  his  home 
amongst  them,  was  regarded  as  one  of  themselves; 
while  Burns,  on  his  part,  having  at  last  got  his  wife  and 


ROBERT  BURNS  117 

children  beside  him,  was  in  a  healthier  frame  of  mind 
and  more  charitably  disposed  towards  those  who  had 
come  to  give  them  a  welcome.  That  he  was  now  as 
one  settled  in  life  with  something  worthy  to  live  for, 
we  have  ample  proof  in  his  letter  written  to  Mrs.  Dunlop 
on  the  first  day  of  the  New  Year.  It  is  discursive,  yet 
philosophical  and  reflective,  and  its  whole  tone  is  that 
of  a  man  who  looks  on  the  world  round  about  him  with 
a  kindly  charity,  and  looks  to  the  future  with  faith  and 
trust.  Life  passed  very  sweetly  and  peacefully  with  the 
poet  and  his  family  for  a  time  here.  The  farm,  it  would 
appear,  was  none  of  the  best, — Mr.  Cunningham  told  him 
he  had  made  a  poet's  not  a  farmer's  choice, — but  Burns 
was  hopeful  and  worked  hard.  Yet  the  labour  of  the 
farm  was  not  to  be  his  life-work.  Even  while  waiting 
impatiently  the  coming  of  his  wife,  he  had  been  con- 
tributing to  Johnson's  Museum,  and  he  fondly  imagined 
that  he  was  going  to  be  farmer,  poet,  and  exciseman 
all  in  one.  Some  have  regretted  his  appointment  to 
the  Excise  at  this  time,  and  attributed  to  his  frequent 
absences  from  home  his  failure  as  a  farmer.  They 
may  be  right.  But  what  was  the  poet  to  do?  He 
knew  by  bitter  experience  how  precarious  the  business 
of  farming  was,  and  thought  that  a  certain  salary,  even 
though  small,  would  always  stand  between  his  family 
and  absolute  want.  *  I  know  not,'  he  wrote  to  Ainslie, 
'how  the  word  exciseman,  or,  still  more  opprobrious, 
gauger,  will  sound  in  your  ears.  I  too  have  seen  the 
day  when  my  auditory  nerves  would  have  felt  very 
delicately  on  this  subject;  but  a  wife  and  children  have 
a  wonderful  power  in  blunting  these  kind  of  sensations. 
Fifty  pounds  a  year  for  life  and  a  pension  for  widows 


n8  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

and  orphans,  you  will  allow,  is  no  bad  settlement  for  a 
poet?    And  to  Blacklock  he  wrote  in  verse : 

'But  what  d'ye  think,  my  trusty  fier, 
I'm  turned  a  gauger — Peace  be  here ! 
Parnassian  queans,  I  fear,  I  fear, 

Ye'll  now  disdain  me  ! 
And  then  my  fifty  pounds  a  year 

Will  little  gain  me. 

I  hae  a  wife  and  twa  wee  laddies, 

They  maun  hae  brose  and  brats  o'  duddies ; 

Ye  ken  yoursel's  my  heart  right  proud  is — 

I  needna  vaunt, 
But  I'll  sned  besoms — thraw  saugh  woodies, 

Before  they  want. 

But  to  conclude  my  silly  rhyme 

(I'm  scant  o'  verse,  and  scant  o*  time), 

To  make  a  happy  fireside  clime 

To  weans  and  wife, 
That's  the  true  pathos  and  sublime 

Of  human  life.' 

This  was  nobly  said;   and   the   poet   spoke   from  the 
heart. 

Not  content  with  being  gauger,  farmer,  and  poet, 
Burns  took  a  lively  interest  in  everything  affecting  the 
welfare  of  the  parish  and  the  well-being  of  its  inhabitants. 
For  this  was  no  poet  of  the  study,  holding  himself  aloof 
from  the  affairs  of  the  world,  and  fearing  the  contamina- 
tion of  his  kind.  Burns  was  alive  all-round,  and  always 
acted  his  part  in  the  world  as  a  husband  and  father ;  as 
a  citizen  and  a  man.  He  made  himself  the  poet  of 
humanity,  because  he  himself  was  so  intensely  human, 
and  joyed  and  sorrowed  with  his  fellows.  At  this  time 
he  established  a  library  in  Dunscore,  and  himself  under- 


ROBERT  BURNS  119 

took  the  whole  management, — drawing  out  rules,  pur- 
chasing books,  acting  for  a  time  as  secretary,  treasurer, 
and  committee  all  in  one.  Among  the  volumes  he 
ordered  were  several  of  his  old  favourites,  The  Spectator, 
The  Man  of  Feeling,  and  The  Lounger  ;  and  we  know 
that  there  was  on  the  shelves  even  a  folio  Hebrew 
Concordance. 

A  favourite  walk  of  the  poet's  while  he  stayed  here 
was  along  Nithside,  where  he  often  wandered  to  take  a 
'  gloamin'  shot  at  the  Muses.'  Here,  after  a  fall  of  rain, 
Cunningham  records,  the  poet  loved  to  walk,  listening 
to  the  roar  of  the  river,  or  watching  it  bursting  impetu- 
ously from  the  groves  of  Friar's  Carse.  'Thither  he 
walked  in  his  sterner  moods,  when  the  world  and  its 
ways  touched  his  spirit ;  and  the  elder  peasants  of  the 
vale  still  show  the  point  at  which  he  used  to  pause  and 
look  on  the  red  and  agitated  stream.' 

In  spite  of  his  multifarious  duties,  he  was  now  more 
than  ever  determined  to  make  his  name  as  a  poet.  To 
Dr.  Moore  he  wrote  (4th  January  1789) :  'The  character 
and  employment  of  a  poet  were  formerly  my  pleasure, 
but  now  my  pride.  .  .  .  Poesy  I  am  determined  to 
prosecute  with  all  my  vigour.  Nature  has  given  very 
few,  if  any,  of  the  profession  the  talents  of  shining  in 
every  species  of  composition.  I  shall  try  (for  until  trial 
it  is  impossible  to  know)  whether  she  has  qualified  me 
to  shine  in  any  one.' 

It  was  inevitable  that  one  whose  district  as  an  excise- 
man reached  far  and  wide  could  not  regularly  attend  to 
ploughing,  sowing,  and  reaping,  and  the  farm  was  very 
often  left  to  the  care  of  servants.  Dr.  Currie  appears 
to  count  it  as  a  reproach  that  his  farm  no  longer  occupied 


120  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

the  principal  part  of  his  care  or  his  thoughts.  Yet  it 
could  not  have  been  otherwise.  Burns  after  having 
undertaken  a  duty  would  attend  to  it  religiously,  and 
we  know  that  he  pursued  his  work  throughout  his  ten 
parishes  diligently,  faithfully,  and  with  unvarying  punctu- 
ality. Others  have  bemoaned  that  those  frequent  Excise 
excursions  led  the  poet  into  temptation,  that  he  was 
being  continually  assailed  by  the  sin  that  so  easily  beset 
him.  Let  it  be  admitted  frankly  that  the  temptations 
to  social  excess  were  great;  is  it  not  all  the  more 
creditable  to  Burns  that  he  did  not  sink  under  those 
temptations  and  become  the  besotted  wreck  conventional 
biography  has  attempted  to  make  him  ?  If  those  who 
raise  this  plaint  mean  to  insinuate  that  Burns  became 
a  confirmed  toper,  then  they  are  assuredly  wrong ;  if  they 
be  only  drawing  attention  to  the  fact  that  drinking  was 
too  common  in  Scotland  at  that  time,  then  they  are 
attacking  not  the  poet  but  the  social  customs  of  his 
day.  It  would  be  easy  if  we  were  to  accept  'the 
general  impression  of  the  place/  and  go  by  the  tale 
of  gossip,  to  show  that  Burns  was  demoralised  by  his 
duties  as  a  gauger,  and  sank  into  a  state  of  maudlin 
intemperance.  But  ascertained  fact  and  the  testimony 
of  unimpeachable  authority  are  at  variance  with  the 
voice  of  gossip.  'So  much  the  worse  for  fact,'  biography 
would  seem  to  have  said,  and  gaily  sped  on  the  work  of 
defamation.  We  only  require  to  forget  Allan  Cunning- 
ham's Personal  Sketch  of  the  Poet,  the  letters  from  Mr. 
Findlater  and  Mr.  Gray,  and  to  close  our  eyes  to  the 
excellence  of  the  poetry  of  this  period,  in  order  to  see 
Burns  on  the  downgrade,  and  to  preach  grand  moral 
lessons  from  the  text  of  a  wasted  life. 


ROBERT  BURNS  121 

But,  after  all,  *  facts  are  chiels  that  winna  ding,'  and 
we  must  take  them  into  account,  however  they  may 
baulk  us  of  grand  opportunities  of  plashing  in  watery 
sentiment.  Speaking  of  the  poet's  biographers,  Mr. 
Findlater  remarks  that  they  have  tried  to  outdo  one 
another  in  heaping  obloquy  on  his  name;  they  have 
made  his  convivial  habits,  habitual  drunkenness;  his 
wit  and  humour,  impiety ;  his  social  talents,  neglect  of 
duty;  and  have  accused  him  of  every  vice.  Then  he 
gives  his  testimony:  'My  connection  with  Robert 
Burns  commenced  immediately  after  his  admission  into 
the  Excise,  and  continued  to  the  hour  of  his  death. 
In  all  that  time  the  superintendence  of  his  behaviour  as 
an  officer  of  the  revenue  was  a  branch  of  my  especial 
province ;  and  it  may  be  supposed  I  would  not  be  an 
inattentive  observer  of  the  general  conduct  of  a  man 
and  a  poet  so  celebrated  by  his  countrymen.  In  the 
former  capacity,  so  far  from  its  being  impossible  for 
him  to  discharge  the  duties  of  his  office  with  that 
regularity  which  is  almost  indispensable,  as  is  palpably 
assumed  by  one  of  his  biographers,  and  insinuated,  not 
very  obscurely  even,  by  Dr.  Currie,  he  was  exemplary 
in  his  attention  as  an  Excise  officer,  and  was  even 
jealous  of  the  least  imputation  on  his  vigilance.' 

But  a  glance  at  the  poems  and  songs  of  this  period 
would  be  a  sufficient  vindication  of  the  poet's  good 
name.  There  are  considerably  over  a  hundred  songs 
and  poems  written  during  his  stay  at  Ellisland,  many 
of  them  of  his  finest.  The  third  volume  of  Johnson's 
Museum,  published  in  February  1790,  contained  no 
fewer  than  forty  songs  by  Burns.  Among  the  Ellisland 
songs  were  such  as,  Ye  Banks  and  Braes  o'  JSonnie 


122  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Doon,  Auld  Lang  Syne,  Willie  brewed  a  Peck  tf  Maut, 
To  Mary  in  Heaven,  Of  a'  the  Airts  the  Wind  can  blaw, 
My  Love  she's  but  a  Lassie  yet,  Tarn  Glen,  John  Anderson 
my  Jo>  songs  that  have  become  the  property  of  the 
world.  Of  the  last-named  song,  Angellier  remarks  that 
the  imagination  of  the  poet  must  have  indeed  explored 
every  situation  of  love  to  have  led  him  to  that  which 
he  in  his  own  experience  could  not  have  known.  Even 
the  song  Willie  brewed  a  Peck  tf  Maut,  the  first  of 
bacchanalian  ditties,  is  the  work  of  a  man  of  sane 
mind  and  healthy  appetite.  It  is  not  of  the  diseased 
imagination  of  drunken  genius.  But  the  greatest  poem 
of  this  period,  and  one  of  Burns's  biggest  achievements, 
is  Tarn  tf  Shanter.  This  poem  was  written  in  answer 
to  a  request  of  Captain  Grose  that  the  poet  would 
provide  a  witch  story  to  be  printed  along  with  a  drawing 
of  Alloway  Kirk,  and  was  first  published  in  Grose's 
Antiquities  of  Scotland.  We  have  been  treated  by 
several  biographers  to  a  private  view  of  the  poet,  with 
wild  gesticulations,  agonising  in  the  composition  of  this 
poem ;  but  where  his  wife  did  not  venture  to  intrude,  we 
surely  need  not  seek  to  desecrate.  *  I  stept  aside  with 
the  bairns  among  the  broom,'  says  Bonnie  Jean ;  not,  we 
should  imagine,  to  leave  room  for  aliens  and  strangers. 
He  has  been  again  burlesqued  for  us  rending  himself 
in  rhyme,  and  stretched  on  straw  groaning  elegiacs  to 
Mary  in  heaven.  All  this  is  mere  sensationalism  pro- 
vided for  illiterate  readers.  We  have  the  poem,  and  its 
excellence  surficeth. 

It  is  worthy  of  note  that  in  Tarn  o'  Shanter,  as  well  as 
in  To  Mary  in  Heaven,  the  poet  goes  back  to  his  earlier 
years  in  Ayrshire.  They  are  posthumous  products  of 


ROBERT  BURNS  123 

the  inspiration  which  gave  us  the  Kilmarnock  Edition. 
I  am  not  inclined  to  agree  with  Carlyle  in  his  estimate 
of  Tarn  o1  Shanter.  It  is  not  the  composition  of  a  man 
of  great  talent,  but  of  a  man  of  transcendent  poetical 
genius.  The  story  itself  is  a  conception  of  genius,  and 
in  the  narration  the  genius  is  unquestionable.  It  is  a 
panorama  of  pictures  so  vivid  and  powerful  that  the 
characters  and  scenes  are  fixed  indelibly  on  the  mind, 
and  abide  with  us  a  cherished  literary  possession.  After 
reading  the  poem,  the  words  are  recalled  without 
conscious  effort  of  memory,  but  as  the  only  possible 
embodiment  of  the  mental  impressions  retained.  Short 
as  the  poem  is,  there  is  in  it  character,  humour,  pathos, 
satire,  indignation,  tenderness,  fun,  frolic,  diablerie, 
almost  every  human  feeling.  I  have  heard  Burns  in 
the  writing  of  this  poem  likened  to  a  composer  at  an 
organ  improvising  a  piece  of  music  in  which,  before  he 
has  done,  he  has  used  every  stop  and  touched  every 
note  on  the  keyboard.  Even  the  weakest  lines  of  the 
piece,  which  mark  a  dramatic  pause  in  the  rapid  narra- 
tion, have  a  distinctive  beauty  and  are  the  most  frequently 
quoted  lines  of  the  poem.  In  artistic  word-painting 
and  graphic  phrasing  Burns  is  here  at  his  best.  His 
description  of  the  horrible  is  worthy  of  Shakspeare ;  and 
it  is  questionable  if  even  the  imagination  of  that  master 
ever  conceived  anything  more  awful  than  the  scene  and 
circumstance  of  the  infernal  orgies  of  those  witches  and 
warlocks.  What  Zolaesque  realism  there  is !  In  the 
line,  'The  grey  hairs  yet  stack  to  the  heft,'  all  the 
gruesomeness  of  murder  is  compressed  into  a  distich. 
Yet  the  horrible  details  are  controlled  and  unified  in 
the  powerful  imagination  of  the  poet.  We  believe  Dr. 


i24  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Blacklock  was  right  in  thinking  that  this  poem,  though 
Burns  had  never  written  another  syllable,  would  have 
made  him  a  high  reputation.  Certainly  it  was  not  the 
work  of  a  man  daily  dazing  his  faculties  with  drink; 
no  more  was  that  exquisite  lyric  To  Mary  in  Heaven. 
Another  poem  of  this  period  deserving  special  mention 
is  The  Whistle^  not  merely  because  of  its  dramatic  force 
and  lyrical  beauty,  but  because  it  gives  a  true  picture 
of  the  drinking  customs  of  the  time.  And  again  I  dare 
assert  that  this  is  not  the  work  of  a  mind  enfeebled  or 
debased  by  drink.  It  is  a  bit  of  simple,  direct,  sincere 
narration,  humanly  healthy  in  tone ;  the  ideas  are  clear 
and  consecutive,  and  the  language  fitting.  It  is  not  so 
that  drunken  genius  expresses  itself.  The  language  of 
a  poetical  mind  enfeebled  by  alcohol  or  opium  is 
frequently  mystic  and  musical;  it  never  deals  with  the 
realities  and  responsibilities  of  life,  but  in  a  witchery 
of  words  winds  and  meanders  through  the  realms  of 
reverie  and  dream.  It  may  be  sweet  and  sensuous; 
it  is  rarely  narrative  or  simple;  never  direct  nor 
forcible. 

In  the  Kirk's  Alarm,  wherein  he  again  reverted  to 
his  Mossgiel  period,  he  displayed  all  his  former  force  of 
satire,  as  well  as  his  sympathy  with  those  who  advocated 
rational  views  in  religion.  Dr.  Macgill  had  written  a 
book  which  the  Kirk  declared  to  be  heretical,  and 
Burns,  at  the  request  of  some  friends,  fought  for  the 
doctor  in  his  usual  way,  though  with  little  hope  of  doing 
him  any  good.  'Ajax's  shield  consisted,  I  think,  of 
seven  bull-hides  and  a  plate  of  brass,  which  altogether 
set  Hector's  utmost  force  at  defiance.  Alas !  I  am  not 
a  Hector,  and  the  worthy  doctor's  foes  are  as  securely 


ROBERT  BURNS  125 

armed  as  Ajax  was.  Ignorance,  superstition,  bigotry, 
stupidity,  malevolence,  self-conceit,  envy — all  strongly 
bound  in  a  massy  frame  of  brazen  impudence ;  to  such 
a  shield  humour  is  the  peck  of  a  sparrow  and  satire  the 
pop-gun  of  a  schoolboy.  Creation-disgracing  sce'le'rats 
such  as  they,  God  only  can  mend,  and  the  devil  only 
can  punish.'  The  doctor  yielded,  Cunningham  tells 
us,  and  was  forgiven,  but  not  the  poet;  pertinently 
adding,  '  so  much  more  venial  is  it  in  devout  men's  eyes 
to  be  guilty  of  heresy  than  of  satire/ 

Into  political  as  well  as  theological  matters  Burns 
also  entered  with  all  his  wonted  enthusiasm.  Of  his 
election  ballads,  the  best,  perhaps,  are  The  Five  Carlins 
and  the  Epistle  to  Mr.  Graham  of  Fintry.  But  these 
ballads  are  not  to  be  taken  as  a  serious  addition  to  the 
poet's  works;  he  did  not  wish  them  to  be  so  taken. 
He  was  a  man  as  well  as  a  poet ;  was  interested  with 
his  neighbours  in  political  affairs,  and  in  the  day  of 
battle  fought  with  the  weapons  he  could  wield  with 
effect.  Nor  are  his  ballads  always  to  be  taken  as 
representing  his  political  principles ;  these  he  expressed 
in  song  that  did  not  owe  its  inspiration  to  the  excite- 
ment of  elections.  Burns  was  not  a  party  man ;  he  had 
in  politics,  as  in  religion,  some  broad  general  principles, 
but  he  had  '  the  warmest  veneration  for  individuals  of 
both  parties.'  The  most  important  verse  in  his  Epistle 
to  Graham  of  Fintry  is  the  last : 

'For  your  poor  friend,  the  Bard,  afar 
He  hears  and  only  hears  the  war, 

A  cool  spectator  purely  : 
So,  when  the  storm  the  forest  rends, 
The  robin  in  the  hedge  descends, 

And  sober  chirps  securely.1 


126  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

Burns's  life  was,  therefore,  quite  full  at  Ellisland,  too 
full  indeed;  for,  towards  the  end  of  1791,  we  find  him 
disposing  of  the  farm,  and  looking  to  the  Excise  alone 
for  a  livelihood.  In  the  farm  he  had  sunk  the  greater 
part  of  the  profits  of  his  Edinburgh  Edition ;  and  now 
it  was  painfully  evident  that  the  money  was  lost.  He 
had  worked  hard  enough,  but  he  was  frequently  absent, 
and  a  farm  thrives  only  under  the  eye  of  a  master.  On 
Excise  business  he  was  accustomed  to  ride  at  least  two 
hundred  miles  every  week,  and  so  could  have  little 
time  to  give  to  his  fields.  Besides  this,  the  soil  of 
Ellisland  had  been  utterly  exhausted  before  he  entered 
on  his  lease,  and  consequently  made  a  miserable  return 
for  the  labour  expended  on  it.  The  friendly  relations 
that  had  existed  between  him  and  his  landlord  were 
broken  off  before  now  j  and  towards  the  close  of  his  stay 
at  Ellisland  Burns  spoke  rather  bitterly  of  Mr.  Miller's 
selfish  kindness.  Miller  was,  in  fact,  too  much  of  a  lord 
and  master,  exacting  submission  as  well  as  rent  from  his 
tenants ;  while  Burns  was  of  too  haughty  a  spirit  to  beck 
and  bow  to  any  man.  '  The  life  of  a  farmer  is,'  he  wrote 
to  Mrs.  Dunlop,  '  as  a  farmer  paying  a  dear,  unconscion- 
able rent,  a  cursed  life.  .  .  .  Devil  take  the  life  of  reap- 
ing the  fruits  that  others  must  eat ! ' 

The  poet,  too,  had  been  overworking  himself,  and  was 
again  subject  to  his  attacks  of  hypochondria.  '  I  feel 
that  horrid  hypochondria  pervading  every  atom  of  both 
body  and  soul.  This  farm  has  undone  my  enjoyment 
of  myself.  It  is  a  ruinous  affair  on  all  hands.'  In  the 
midst  of  his  troubles  and  vexations  with  his  farm,  he 
began  to  look  more  hopefully  to  the  Excise,  and  to  see 
in  the  future  a  life  of  literary  ease,  when  he  could  devote 


ROBERT  BURNS  127 

himself  wholly  to  the  Muses.  He  had  already  got 
ranked  on  the  list  as  supervisor,  an  appointment  that  he 
reckoned  might  be  worth  one  hundred  or  two  hundred 
pounds  a  year  ;  and  this  determined  him  to  quit  the  farm 
entirely,  and  to  try  to  make  a  living  by  one  profession. 
As  farmer,  exciseman,  and  poet  he  had  tried  too  much, 
and  even  a  man  of  his  great  capacity  for  work  was  bound 
to  have  succumbed  under  the  strain.  Even  had  the 
farm  not  proved  the  ruinous  bargain  it  did,  we  imagine 
that  he  must  have  been  compelled  sooner  or  later  to 
relinquish  one  of  the  two,  either  his  farm  or  his  Excise 
commission.  Circumstances  decided  for  him,  and  in 
December  1791  he  sold  by  auction  his  stock  and  im- 
plements, and  removed  to  Dumfries,  '  leaving  nothing  at 
Ellisland  but  a  putting-stone,  with  which  he  loved  to 
exercise  his  strength  j  a  memory  of  his  musings,  which 
can  never  die ;  and  three  hundred  pounds  of  his  money, 
sunk  beyond  redemption  in  a  speculation  from  which 
all  augured  happiness/ 


CHAPTER   VIII 

DUMFRIES 

WHEN  Burns  removed  from  Ellisland  to  Dumfries,  he 
took  up  his  abode  in  a  small  house  of  three  apartments 
in  the  Wee  Vennel.  Here  he  stayed  till  Whitsunday 
1 793,  when  the  family  removed  to  a  detached  house  of 
two  storeys  in  the  Mill  Vennel.  A  mere  closet  nine 
feet  square  was  the  poet's  writing-room  in  this  house, 
and  it  was  in  the  bedroom  adjoining  that  he  died. 

The  few  years  of  his  residence  in  Dumfries  have  been 
commonly  regarded  as  a  period  of  poverty  and  intem- 
perance. But  his  intemperance  has  always  been  most 
religiously  exaggerated,  and  we  doubt  not  also  that  the 
poverty  of  the  family  at  this  time  has  been  made  to 
appear  worse  than  it  was.  Burns  had  not  a  salary 
worthy  of  his  great  abilities,  it  is  true,  but  there  is  good 
reason  to  believe  that  the  family  lived  in  comparative 
ease  and  comfort,  and  that  there  were  luxuries  in  their 
home,  which  neither  father  nor  mother  had  known  in 
their  younger  days.  Burns  liked  to  see  his  Bonnie  Jean 
neat  and  trim,  and  she  went  as  braw  as  any  wife  of 
the  town.  Though  we  know  that  he  wrote  painfully, 
towards  the  end  of  his  life,  for  the  loan  of  paltry  sums,  we 
are  to  regard  this  as  a  sign  more  of  temporary  embarrass- 
ment than  of  a  continual  struggle  to  make  ends  meet. 


ROBERT  BURNS  129 

The  word  debt  grated  so  harshly  on  Burns's  ears  that  he 
could  not  be  at  peace  with  himself  so  long  as  the  pettiest 
account  remained  unpaid;  and  if  he  had  no  ready 
money  in  his  hands  to  meet  it,  he  must  e'en  borrow 
from  a  friend.  His  income,  when  he  settled  in  Dum- 
fries, was  'down  money  £TO  per  annum,'  and  there 
were  perquisites  which  must  have  raised  it  to  eighty  or 
ninety.  Though  his  hopes  of  preferment  were  never 
realised,  he  tried  his  best  on  this  slender  income  'to 
make  a  happy  fireside  clime  to  weans  and  wife,'  and  in 
a  sense  succeeded. 

What  he  must  have  felt  more  keenly  than  anything 
else  in  leaving  Ellisland  was,  that  in  giving  up  farming 
he  was  making  an  open  confession  of  failure  in  his  ideal 
of  combining  in  himself  the  farmer,  the  poet,  and  the 
exciseman.  There  was  a  stigma  also  attaching  to  the 
name  of  gauger,  that  must  often  have  been  galling  to 
the  spirit  of  Burns.  The  ordinary  labourer  utters  the 
word  with  dry  contempt,  as  if  he  were  speaking  of  a  spy. 
But  the  thoughts  of  a  wife  and  bairns  had  already  prevailed 
over  prejudice ;  he  realised  the  responsibilities  of  a  hus- 
band and  father,  and  pocketed  his  pride.  A  great  change 
it  must  have  been  to  come  from  the  quiet  and  seclusion 
of  Ellisland  to  settle  down  in  the  midst  of  the  busy  life 
of  an  important  burgh. 

Life  in  provincial  towns  in  Scotland  in  those  days  was 
simply  frittered  away  in  the  tittle-tattle  of  cross  and 
causeway,  and  the  insipid  talk  of  taverns.  The  most 
trifling  incidents  of  everyday  life  were  dissected  and  dis- 
cussed, and  magnified  into  events  of  the  first  importance. 
Many  residents  had  no  trade  or  profession  whatever. 
Annuitants  and  retired  merchants  built  themselves 
9 


130  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

houses,  had  their  portraits  painted  in  oil,  and  thereafter 
strutted  into  an  aristocracy.  Without  work,  without  hobby, 
without  healthy  recreation,  and  cursed  with  inglorious 
leisure,  they  simply  dissipated  time  until  they  should  pass 
into  eternity.  The  only  amusement  such  lumpish  crea- 
tures could  have  was  to  meet  in  some  inn  or  tavern,  and 
swill  themselves  into  a  debauched  joy  of  life.  Dumfries, 
when  Burns  came  to  it  in  1791,  was  no  better  and  no 
worse  than  its  neighbours ;  and  we  can  readily  imagine 
how  eagerly  such  a  man  would  be  welcomed  by  its 
pompously  dull  and  leisured  topers.  Now  might  their 
meetings  be  lightened  with  flashes  of  genius,  and  the  lazy 
hours  of  their  long  nights  go  fleeting  by  on  the  wings  of 
wit  and  eloquence.  Too  often  in  Dumfries  was  Burns 
wiled  into  the  howffs  and  haunts  of  these  seasoned  casks. 
They  could  stand  heavy  drinking ;  the  poet  could  not. 
He  was  too  highly  strung,  and  if  he  had  consulted  his 
own  inclination  would  rather  have  shunned  than  sought 
the  company  of  men  who  met  to  quaff  their  quantum  of 
wine  and  sink  into  sottish  sleep.  For  Burns  was  never 
a  drunkard,  not  even  in  Dumfries ;  though  the  contrary 
has  been  asserted  so  often  that  it  has  all  the  honour  that 
age  and  the  respectability  of  authority  can  give  it.  There 
was  with  him  no  animal  craving  for  drink,  nor  has  he 
been  convicted  of  solitary  drinking ;  but  he  was  intensely 
convivial,  and  drank,  as  Professor  Blackie  put  it,  'only 
as  the  carnal  seasoning  of  a  rampant  intellectuality.' 
There  is  no  doubt  that  he  came  to  Dumfries  a  com- 
paratively pure  and  sober  man ;  and  if  he  now  began  to 
frequent  the  Globe  Tavern,  often  to  cast  his  pearls  before 
swine,  let  it  be  remembered  that  he  was  compelled 
frequently  to  meet  there  strangers  and  tourists  who  had 


ROBERT  BURNS  131 

journeyed  for  the  express  purpose  of  meeting  the  poet. 
Nowadays  writers  and  professional  men  have  their 
clubs,  and  in  general  frequent  them  more  regularly  than 
Burns  ever  haunted  the  howffs  of  Dumfries.  But 
we  have  heard  too  much  about  'the  poet's  moral 
course  after  he  settled  in  Dumfries  being  down- 
ward.' 'From  the  time  of  his  migration  to  Dum- 
fries,' Principal  Shairp  soberly  informs  us,  'it  would 
appear  that  he  was  gradually  dropped  out  of  acquaintance 
by  most  of  the  Dumfriesshire  lairds,  as  he  had  long  been 
by  the  parochial  and  other  ministers.'  Poor  lairds ! 
Poor  ministers !  If  they  preferred  their  own  talk  of 
crops  and  cattle  and  meaner  things  to  the  undoubted 
brilliancy  of  Burns's  conversation,  surely  their  dulness 
and  want  of  appreciation  is  not  to  be  laid  to  the  charge 
of  the  poet.  I  doubt  not  had  the  poet  lived  to  a  good 
old  age  he  would  have  been  gradually  dropped  out  of 
acquaintance  by  some  who  have  not  scrupled  to  write 
his  biography.  Politics,  it  is  admitted,  may  have  formed 
the  chief  element  in  the  lairds'  and  ministers'  aversion, 
but  there  is  a  hint  that  his  irregular  life  had  as  much 
to  do  with  it.  Is  it  to  be  seriously  contended 
that  these  men  looked  askance  at  Burns  because 
of  his  occasional  convivialities  ?  '  Madam,'  he  answered 
a  lady  who  remonstrated  with  him  on  this  very  subject, 
'  they  would  not  thank  me  for  my  company  if  I  did  not 
drink  with  them.'  These  lairds,  perhaps  even  these 
ministers,  could  in  all  probability  stand  their  three 
bottles  with  the  best,  and  were  more  likely  to  drop  the 
acquaintance  of  one  who  would  not  drink  bottle  for 
bottle  with  them  than  of  one  who  indulged  to  excess. 
It  was  considered  a  breach  of  hospitality  not  to  imbibe 


132  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

so  long  as  the  host  ordained ;  and  in  many  cases  glasses 
were  supplied  so  constructed  that  they  had  to  be  drained 
at  every  toast.  *  Occasional  hard  drinking,'  he  confessed 
to  Mrs.  Dunlop,  '  is  the  devil  to  me ;  against  this  I  have 
again  and  again  set  my  resolution,  and  have  greatly 
succeeded.  Taverns  I  have  totally  abandoned ;  it  is  the 
private  parties  in  the  family  way  among  the  hard-drink- 
ing gentlemen  of  this  county  that  do  me  the  mischief; 
but  even  this  I  have  more  than  half  given  over.'  Most 
assuredly  whatever  these  men  charged  against  Robert 
Burns  it  was  not  drunkenness.  But  he  has  been  accused 
of  mixing  with  low  company!  That  is  something 
nearer  the  mark,  and  goes  far  to  explain  the  aversion  of 
those  stately  Tories.  But  again,  what  is  meant  by  low 
company?  Are  we  to  believe  that  the  poet  made 
associates  of  depraved  and  abandoned  men?  Not  for 
a  moment !  This  low  company  was  nothing  more  than 
men  in  the  rank  of  life  into  which  he  had  been  born ; 
mechanics,  tradesmen,  farmers,  ploughmen,  who  did  not 
move  in  the  aristocratic  circles  of  patrician  lairds  or 
ministers  ordained  to  preach  the  gospel  to  the  poor. 
It  was  simply  the  old,  old  cry  of  'associating  with 
publicans  and  sinners.' 

We  do  not  defend  nor  seek  to  hide  the  poet's  aberra- 
tions ;  he  confessed  them  remorselessly,  and  condemned 
himself.  But  we  do  raise  our  voice  against  the  ex- 
aggeration of  occasional  over-indulgence  into  confirmed 
debauchery ;  and  dare  assert  that  Burns  was  as  sober  a 
man  as  the  average  lairds  and  ministers  who  had  the 
courage  of  their  prejudices,  and  wrote  themselves  down 
asses  to  all  posterity. 

But  here  again  the  work  the  poet  managed  to  do  is  a 


ROBERT  BURNS  133 

sufficient  disproof  of  his  irregular  life.  He  was  at  this 
time,  besides  working  hard  at  his  Excise  business,  writing 
ballads  and  songs,  correcting  for  Creech  the  two-volume 
edition  of  his  poems,  and  managing  somehow  or  other 
to  find  time  for  a  pretty  voluminous  correspondence. 
His  hands  were  full  and  his  days  completely  occupied. 
He  would  not  have  been  an  Excise  officer  very  long  had 
he  been  unable  to  attend  to  his  duties.  William  Wallace, 
the  editor  of  Chambers^  Burns^  has  studied  very  carefully 
this  period  of  the  poet's  life,  and  found  that  in  those 
days  of  petty  faultfinding  he  has  not  once  been  repri- 
manded, either  for  drunkenness  or  for  dereliction  of  duty. 
There  were  spies  and  informers  about  who  would  not 
have  left  the  Excise  Commissioners  uninformed  of  the 
paltriest  charge  they  could  have  trumped  up  against 
Burns.  Nor  is  there,  when  we  look  at  his  literary  work, 
any  falling  off  in  his  powers  as  a  poet.  He  sang  as 
sweetly,  as  purely,  as  magically  as  ever  he  did ;  and  this 
man,  who  has  been  branded  as  a  blasphemer  and  a 
libertine,  had  nobly  set  himself  to  purify  the  polluted 
stream  of  Scottish  Song.  He  was  still  continuing  his 
contributions  to  Johnson's  Museum,  and  now  he  had 
also  begun  to  write  for  Thomson's  more  ambitious 
work. 

Some  of  the  first  of  his  Dumfriesshire  songs  owe 
their  inspiration  to  a  hurried  visit  he  paid  to  Mrs. 
Maclehose  in  Edinburgh  before  she  sailed  to  join  her 
husband  in  the  West  Indies.  The  best  of  these 
are,  perhaps,  My  Nannies  Awa'  and  Ae  Fond  Kiss.  The 
fourth  verse  of  the  latter  was  a  favourite  of  Byron's, 
while  Scott  claims  for  it  that  it  is  worth  a  thousand 
romances — 


134  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

'Had  we  never  loved  so  kindly, 
Had  we  never  loved  so  blindly  ! 
Never  met — or  never  parted, 
We  had  ne'er  been  broken-hearted.' 

Another  song  of  a  different  kind,  The  DeiPs  awa  wf  the 
Exciseman,  had  its  origin  in  a  raid  upon  a  smuggling 
brig  that  had  got  into  shallow  water  in  the  Solway.  The 
ship  was  armed  and  well  manned ;  and  while  Lewars,  a 
brother-excisemen,  posted  to  Dumfries  for  a  guard  of 
dragoons,  Burns,  with  a  few  men  under  him,  watched  to 
prevent  landing  or  escape.  It  was  while  impatiently 
waiting  Lewars's  return  that  he  composed  this  song. 
When  the  dragoons  arrived  Bums  put  himself  at  their 
head,  and  wading,  sword  in  hand,  was  the  first  to  board 
the  smuggler.  The  affair  might  ultimately  have  led  to 
his  promotion  had  he  not,  next  day  at  the  sale  of  the 
vessel's  arms  and  stores  in  Dumfries,  purchased  four 
carronades,  which  he  sent,  with  a  letter  testifying  his  ad- 
miration and  respect,  to  the  French  Legislative  Assembly. 
The  carronades  never  reached  their  destination,  having 
been  intercepted  at  Dover  by  the  Custom  House 
authorities.  It  is  a  pity  perhaps  that  Burns  should  have 
testified  his  political  leanings  in  so  characteristic  a  way. 
It  was  the  impetuous  act  of  a  poet  roused  to  enthusiasm, 
as  were  thousands  of  his  fellow-countrymen  at  the  time, 
by  what  was  thought  to  be  the  beginning  of  universal 
brotherhood  in  France.  But  whatever  may  be  said  as 
to  the  impulsive  imprudence  of  the  step,  it  is  not  to  be 
condemned  as  a  most  absurd  and  presumptuous  breach 
of  decorum.  We  were  not  at  war  with  France  at  this 
time ;  had  not  even  begun  to  await  developments  with 
critical  suspicion.  Talleyrand  had  not  yet  been  slighted 


ROBERT  BURNS  135 

by  our  Queen,  and  protestations  of  peace  and  friendship 
were  passing  between  the  two  Governments.  Any  subject 
of  the  king  might  at  this  time  have  written  a  friendly 
letter  or  forwarded  a  token  of  goodwill  to  the  French 
Government,  without  being  suspected  of  disloyalty. 
But  by  the  time  the  carronades  had  reached  Dover  the 
complexion  of  things  had  changed  j  and  yet  even  in  those 
critical  times  Burns's  action,  though  it  may  have  hindered 
promotion,  does  not  appear  to  have  been  interpreted  as 
'a  most  absurd  and  presumptuous  breach  of  decorum.' 
That  interpretation  was  left  for  biographers  made  wise 
with  the  passions  of  war ;  and  yet  they  have  not  said  in 
so  many  words,  what  they  darkly  insinuate,  that  the  poet 
was  not  a  loyal  British  subject.  His  love  of  country  is  too 
surely  established.  That,  later,  he  thought  the  Ministry 
engaging  in  an  unjust  and  unrighteous  war,  may  be 
frankly  admitted.  He  was  not  alone  in  his  opinion  ;  nor 
was  he  the  only  poet  carried  away  with  a  wild  enthusiasm 
of  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity.  Societies  were  then 
springing  up  all  over  the  country  calling  for  redress  of 
grievances  and  for  greater  political  freedom.  Such 
societies  were  regarded  by  the  Government  of  the  day 
as  seditious,  and  their  agitations  as  dangerous  to  the 
peace  of  the  country;  and  Burns,  though  he  did  not 
become  a  member  of  the  Society  of  the  Friends  of  the 
People,  was  at  one  with  them  in  their  desire  for  reform. 
It  was  known  also  that  he  '  gat  the  Gazeteer]  and  that 
was  enough  to  mark  him  out  as  a  disaffected  person. 
No  doubt  he  also  talked  imprudently  ;  for  it  was  not  the 
nature  of  this  man  to  keep  his  sentiments  hidden  in  his 
heart,  and  to  talk  the  language  of  expediency.  What  he 
thought  in  private  he  advocated  publicly  in  season  and 


136  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

out  of  season ;  and  it  was  quite  in  the  natural  course  of 
things  that  information  regarding  his  political  opinions 
should  be  lodged  against  him  with  the  Board  of  Excise. 
His  political  conduct  was  made  the  subject  of  official 
inquiry,  and  it  would  appear  that  for  a  time  he  was  in 
danger  of  dismissal  from  the  service.  This  is  a  some- 
what painful  episode  in  his  life ;  and  we  find  him  in  a 
letter  to  Mr.  Graham  of  Fintry  repudiating  the  slander- 
ous charges,  yet  confessing  that  the  tender  ties  of  wife 
and  children  'unnerve  courage  and  wither  resolution.' 
Mr.  Find  later,  his  superior,  was  of  opinion  that  only  a  very 
mild  reprimand  was  administered,  and  the  poet  warned 
to  be  more  prudent  in  his  speech.  But  what  appeared 
mild  to  Mr.  Findlater  was  galling  to  Bums.  In  his  letter 
to  Erskine  of  Mar  he  says :  '  One  of  our  supervisors- 
general,  a  Mr.  Corbet,  was  instructed  to  inquire  on  the 
spot  and  to  document  me — that  my  business  was  to  act, 
not  to  think ;  and  that  whatever  might  be  men  or  meas- 
ures it  was  for  me  to  be  silent  and  obedie?tt.'> 

We  can  hardly  conceive  a  harsher  sentence  on  one  of 
Burns's  temperament,  and  we  doubt  not  that  the  de- 
gradation of  being  thus  gagged,  and  the  blasting  of  his 
hopes  of  promotion,  were  the  cause  of  much  of  the 
bitterness  that  we  find  bursting  from  him  now  more 
frequently  than  ever,  both  in  speech  and  writing.  That 
remorse  for  misconduct  irritated  him  against  himself  and 
against  the  world,  is  true ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  true 
that  he  must  have  chafed  against  the  servility  of  an 
office  that  forbade  him  the  freedom  of  personal  opinion. 
In  the  same  letter  he  unburdens  his  heart  in  a  burst  of 
eloquent  and  noble  indignation. 

1  Burns  was  a  poor  man  from  birth,  and  an  exciseman 


ROBERT  BURNS  137 

by  necessity ;  but — I  will  say  it — the  sterling  of  his 
honest  worth  no  poverty  could  debase ;  his  independent 
British  mind  oppression  might  bend,  but  could  not 
subdue.  ...  I  have  three  sons  who,  I  see  already, 
have  brought  into  the  world  souls  ill-qualified  to  inhabit 
the  bodies  of  slaves.  .  .  .  Does  any  man  tell  me  that 
my  full  efforts  can  be  of  no  service,  and  that  it  does  not 
belong  to  my  humble  station  to  meddle  with  the  concerns 
of  a  nation?  I  can  tell  him  that  it  is  on  such  indi- 
viduals as  I  that  a  nation  has  to  rest,  both  for  the  hand 
of  support  and  the  eye  of  intelligence.' 

What  the  precise  charges  against  him  were,  we  are  not 
informed.  It  is  alleged  that  he  once,  when  the  health 
of  Pitt  was  being  drunk,  interposed  with  the  toast  of 
'  A  greater  than  Pitt — George  Washington.'  There  can 
be  little  fault  found  with  the  sentiment.  It  is  given  to 
poets  to  project  themselves  into  futurity,  and  declare  the 
verdict  of  posterity.  But  the  occasion  was  ill-chosen, 
and  he  spoke  with  all  a  poet's  imprudence.  In  another 
company  he  aroused  the  martial  fury  of  an  unreasoning 
captain  by  proposing  the  toast,  '  May  our  success  in  the 
present  war  be  equal  to  the  justice  of  our  cause.'  A 
very  humanitarian  toast,  one  would  think,  but  regarded 
as  seditious  by  the  fire-eating  captain,  who  had  not  the 
sense  to  see  that  there  was  more  of  sedition  in  his 
resentment  than  in  Burns's  proposal.  Yet  the  affair 
looked  black  enough  for  a  time,  and  the  poet  was 
afraid  that  even  this  story  would  be  carried  to  the  ears 
of  the  commissioners,  and  his  political  opinions  be  again 
misrepresented. 

Another  thing  that  came  to  disturb  his  peace  of  mind 
was  his  quarrel  with  Mrs.  Riddell  of  Woodley  Park, 


138  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

where  he  had  been  made  a  welcome  guest  ever  since 
his  advent  to  this  district.  That  Burns,  in  the  heat  of  a 
fever  of  intoxication,  had  been  guilty  of  a  glaring  act  of 
impropriety  in  the  presence  of  the  ladies  seated  in  the 
drawing-room,  we  may  gather  from  the  internal  evidence 
of  his  letter  written  the  following  morning  'from  the 
regions  of  hell,  amid  the  horrors  of  the  damned.'  It 
would  appear  that  the  gentlemen  left  in  the  dining-room 
had  got  ingloriously  drunk,  and  there  and  then  proposed 
an  indecorous  raid  on  the  drawing-room.  Whatever  it 
might  be  they  did,  it  was  Burns  who  was  made  to  suffer 
the  shame  of  the  drunken  plot.  His  letter  of  abject 
apology  remained  unanswered,  and  the  estrangement 
was  only  embittered  by  some  lampoons  which  he  wrote 
afterwards  on  this  accomplished  lady.  The  affair  was 
bruited  abroad,  and  the  heinousness  of  the  poet's  offence 
vastly  exaggerated.  Certain  it  is  that  he  became  deeply 
incensed  against  not  only  the  lady,  but  her  husband  as 
well,  to  whom  he  considered  he  owed  no  apology  what- 
ever. Matters  were  only  made  worse  by  his  unworthy 
verses,  and  it  was  not  till  he  was  almost  on  the  brink 
of  the  grave  that  he  and  Mrs.  Riddell  met  again,  and 
the  old  friendship  was  re-established.  The  lady  not 
only  forgot  and  forgave,  but  she  was  one  of  the  first 
after  the  poet's  death  to  write  generously  and  apprecia- 
tively of  his  character  and  abilities. 

That  the  quarrel  with  Mrs.  Riddell  was  prattled  about 
in  Dumfries,  and  led  other  families  to  drop  the  acquaint- 
ance of  the  poet,  we  are  made  painfully  aware ;  and  in 
his  correspondence  now  there  is  rancour,  bitterness,  and 
remorse  more  pronounced  and  more  settled  than  at  any 
other  period  of  his  life.  He  could  not  go  abroad  with- 


ROBERT  BURNS  139 

out  being  reminded  of  the  changed  attitude  of  the  world; 
he  could  not  stay  at  home  without  seeing  his  noble  wife 
uncomplainingly  nursing  a  child  that  was  not  hers.  He 
cursed  himself  for  his  sins  and  follies;  he  cursed  the 
world  for  its  fickleness  and  want  of  sympathy.  '  His 
wit,1  says  Heron,  'became  more  gloomy  and  sarcastic, 
and  his  conversation  and  writings  began  to  assume  a 
misanthropical  tone,  by  which  they  had  not  been  before 
in  any  eminent  degree  distinguished.  But  with  all  his 
failings  his  was  still  that  exalted  mind  which  had  raised 
itself  above  the  depression  of  its  original  condition,  with 
all  the  energy  of  the  lion  pawing  to  free  his  hinder  limbs 
from  the  yet  encumbering  earth.' 

His  health  now  began  to  give  his  friends  serious 
concern.  To  Cunningham  he  wrote,  February  24,  1794  : 
*  For  these  two  months  I  have  not  been  able  to  lift 
a  pen.  My  constitution  and  my  frame  were  ab  origine 
blasted  with  a  deep,  incurable  taint  of  hypochondria, 
which  poisons  my  existence.'  A  little  later  he  confesses: 
'  I  have  been  in  poor  health.  I  am  afraid  that  I  am 
about  to  suffer  for  the  follies  of  my  youth.  My  medical 
friends  threaten  me  with  a  flying  gout,  but  I  trust  they 
are  mistaken.'  His  only  comfort  in  those  days  was  his 
correspondence  with  Thomson  and  with  Johnson.  He 
kept  pouring  out  song  after  song,  criticising,  rewriting, 
changing  what  was  foul  and  impure  into  songs  of  the 
tenderest  delicacy.  He  showed  love  in  every  mood, 
from  the  rapture  of  pure  passion  in  the  Lea  Rig,  the 
maidenly  abandon  of  Whistle  and  /'//  come  to  you,  my 
Lad,  to  the  humour  of  Last  May  a  Braw  Wooer  and 
Duncan  Gray,  and  the  guileless  devotion  of  O  inert 
thou  in  the  Cauld  Blast.  But  he  sang  of  more  than 


140  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

love.  Turning  from  the  coldness  of  the  high  and 
mighty,  who  had  once  been  his  friends,  he  found 
consolation  in  the  naked  dignity  of  manhood,  and 
penned  the  hymn  of  humanity,  A  Marts  a  Man  for  a1 
that.  Perhaps  he  found  his  text  in  Tristram  Shandy : 
'  Honours,  like  impressions  upon  coin,  may  give  an 
ideal  and  local  value  to  a  bit  of  base  metal,  but  gold 
and  silver  pass  all  the  world  over  with  no  other  re- 
commendation than  their  own  weight.'  Something  like 
this  occurs  in  Massinger's  Duke  of  Florence^  where  it 
is  said  of  princes  that 

'  They  can  give  wealth  and  titles,  but  no  virtues ; 
This  is  without  their  power.' 

Gower  also  had  written — 

'  A  king  can  kill,  a  king  can  save  ; 
A  king  can  make  a  lord  a  knave, 
And  of  a  knave  a  lord  also.' 

But  the  poem  is  undoubtedly  Burns's,  and  it  is  one  he 
must  have  written  ere  he  passed  away.  Scots  wha  hae 
is  another  of  his  Dumfries  poems.  Mr.  Syme  gives  a 
highly-coloured  and  one-sided  view  of  the  poet  riding  in 
a  storm  between  Gatehouse  and  Kenmure,  where  we  are 
assured  he  composed  this  ode.  Carlyle  accepts  Syme's 
authority,  and  adds :  c  Doubtless  this  stern  hymn  was 
singing  itself,  as  he  formed  it,  through  the  soul  of  Barns ; 
but  to  the  external  ear  it  should  be  sung  with  the  throat 
of  the  whirlwind.'  Burns  gives  an  account  of  the  writ- 
ing of  the  poem,  which  it  is  difficult  to  reconcile  with 
Mr.  Syme's  sensational  details.  It  matters  not,  however, 
when  or  how  it  was  written ;  we  have  it  now,  one  of  the 
most  martial  and  rousing  odes  ever  penned.  Not  only 


ROBERT  BURNS  141 

has  it  gripped  the  heart  of  Scotsmen,  but  it  has  taken 
the  ear  of  the  world ;  its  fire  and  vigour  have  inspired 
soldiers  in  the  day  of  battle,  and  consoled  them  in  the 
hour  of  death.  We  are  not  forgetful  of  the  fact  that 
Mrs.  Hemans,  who  wrote  some  creditable  verse,  and 
the  placid  Wordsworth,  discussed  this  ode,  and  agreed 
that  it  was  little  else  than  the  rhodomontade  of  a  school- 
boy. It  is  a  pity  that  such  authorities  should  have 
missed  the  charm  of  Scots  wha  hae.  More  than  likely 
they  made  up  for  the  loss  in  a  solitary  appreciation  of 
Betty  Foy  or  The  Pilgrim  Fathers. 

Another  martial  ode,  composed  in  1795,  was  called 
forth  by  the  immediate  dangers  of  the  time.  The 
country  was  roused  by  the  fear  of  foreign  invasion,  and 
Burns,  who  had  enrolled  himself  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Dumfriesshire  Volunteers,  penned  the  patriotic  song, 
Does  Haughty  Gaul  Invasion  threat?  This  song  itself 
might  have  reinstalled  him  in  public  favour,  and  dis- 
pelled all  doubt  as  to  his  loyalty,  had  he  cared  again  to 
court  the  society  of  those  who  had  dropped  him  from 
the  list  of  their  acquaintance.  But  Burns  had  grown 
indifferent  to  any  favour  save  the  favour  of  his  Muse ; 
besides,  he  was  now  shattered  in  health,  and  assailed 
with  gloomy  forebodings  of  an  early  death.  For  him- 
self he  would  have  faced  death  manfully,  but  again 
it  was  the  thought  of  wife  and  bairns  that  unmanned 
him. 

Not  content  with  supplying  Thomson  with  songs,  he 
wrote  letters  full  of  hints  and  suggestions  anent  songs 
and  song-making,  and  now  and  then  he  gave  a  glimpse 
of  himself  at  work.  We  see  him  sitting  under  the  shade 
of  an  old  thorn  crooning  to  himself  until  he  gets  a  verse 


142  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

to  suit  the  measure  he  has  in  his  mind ;  looking  round 
for  objects  in  nature  that  are  in  unison  and  harmony 
with  the  cogitations  of  his  fancy ;  humming  every  now 
and  then  the  air  with  the  verses ;  retiring  to  his  study  to 
commit  his  effusions  to  paper,  and  while  he  swings  at 
intervals  on  the  hind  legs  of  his  elbow-chair,  criticising 
what  he  has  written.  A  common  walk  of  his  when  he 
was  in  the  poetical  vein  was  to  the  ruins  of  Lincluden 
Abbey,  whither  he  was  often  accompanied  by  his  eldest 
boy ;  sometimes  towards  Martingdon  ford,  on  the  north 
side  of  the  Nith.  When  he  returned  home  with  a  set  of 
verses,  he  listened  attentively  to  his  wife  singing  them, 
and  if  she  happened  to  find  a  word  that  was  harsh  in 
sound,  a  smoother  one  was  immediately  substituted; 
but  he  would  on  no  account  ever  sacrifice  sense  to 
sound. 

During  the  earlier  part  of  this  year  Burns  had  taken 
his  full  share  in  the  political  contest  that  was  going  on, 
and  fought  for  Heron  of  Heron,  the  Whig  candidate, 
with  electioneering  ballads,  not  to  be  claimed  as  great 
poems  nor  meant  to  be  so  ranked,  but  marked  with 
all  his  incisiveness  of  wit  and  satire,  and  with  his 
extraordinary  deftness  of  portraiture.  Heron  was  the 
successful  candidate,  and  his  poetical  supporter  again 
began  to  indulge  in  dreams  of  promotion :  '  a  life 
of  literary  leisure  with  a  decent  competency  was  the 
summit  of  his  wishes.'  But  his  dreams  were  not  to 
be  realised. 

In  September  his  favourite  child  and  only  daughter, 
Elizabeth,  died  at  Mauchline,  and  he  was  prostrated 
with  grief.  He  had  also  taken  very  much  to  heart  the 
inexplicable  silence  of  his  old  friend,  and  for  many  years 


OFTHr- 


f  UNIVERSITY! 

ROBERT  BURNS  143 


constant  correspondent,  Mrs.  Dunlop.  To  both  these 
griefs  he  alludes  in  a  letter  to  her,  dated  January  31, 
1796  :  '  These  many  months  you  have  been  two  packets 
in  my  debt.  What  sin  of  ignorance  I  have  committed 
against  so  highly  valued  a  friend  I  am  utterly  at  a  loss  to 
guess.  Alas  !  madam,  I  can  ill  afford  at  this  time  to  be 
deprived  of  any  of  the  small  remnant  of  my  pleasures. 
I  have  lately  drunk  deep  of  the  cup  of  affliction.  The 
autumn  robbed  me  of  my  only  daughter  and  darling 
child,  and  that  at  a  distance,  too,  and  so  rapidly  as 
to  put  it  out  of  my  power  to  pay  my  last  duties  to 
her.  I  had  scarcely  begun  to  recover  from  that 
shock  when  I  became  myself  the  victim  of  a  severe 
rheumatic  fever,  and  long  the  die  spun  doubtful,  until, 
after  many  weeks  of  a  sickbed,  it  seems  to  have  turned 
up  life.' 

There  was  an  evident  decline  in  the  poet's  appear- 
ance, Dr.  Currie  tells  us,  for  upwards  of  a  year  before 
his  death,  and  he  himself  was  sensible  that  his  consti- 
tution was  sinking.  During  almost  the  whole  of  the 
winter  of  1795-96  he  had  been  confined  to  the  house. 
Then  follows  the  unsubstantiated  story  which  has  done 
duty  for  Shakspeare  and  many  other  poets.  '  He  dined 
at  a  tavern,  returned  home  about  three  o'clock  in  a  very 
cold  morning,  benumbed  and  intoxicated.  This  was 
followed  by  an  attack  of  rheumatism.'  It  is  difficult  to 
kill  a  charitable  myth,  especially  one  that  is  so  agree- 
able to  the  levelling  instincts  of  ordinary  humanity,  and 
of  such  sweet  consolation  to  the  weaker  brethren.  Of 
course  there  are  variants  of  the  story,  with  a  stair  and 
sleep  and  snow  brought  in  as  sensational,  if  improbable, 
accessories;  but  such  stories  as  these  all  good  men 


i44  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

refuse  to  believe,  unless  they  are  compelled  to  do  so  by 
the  conclusive  evidence  of  direct  authority ;  and  that,  in 
this  case,  is  altogether  awanting.  All  evidence  that  has 
been  forthcoming  has  gone  directly  against  it,  and  the 
story  may  be  accepted  as  a  myth.  The  fact  is  that  brains 
have  been  ransacked  to  find  reason  for  the  poet's  early 
death, — as  if  the  goings  and  comings  of  death  could  be 
scientifically  calculated  in  biography, — and  the  last  years 
of  his  'irregular  life'  are  blamed  :  Dumfries  is  set  apart 
as  the  chief  sinner.  No  doubt  his  life  was  irregular 
there ;  his  duties  were  irregular ;  his  hours  were  irregular. 
But  Burns  in  his  thirty-six  years  had  lived  a  full  life, 
putting  as  much  into  one  year  as  the  ordinary  sons  of 
men  put  into  two.  He  had  had  threatenings  of  rheu- 
matism and  heart  disease  when  he  was  an  overworked 
lad  at  Lochlea ;  and  now  his  constitution  was  breaking 
up  from  the  rate  at  which  he  had  lived.  Excess  of  work 
more  than  excess  of  drink  brought  him  to  an  early 
grave.  During  his  few  years'  stay  at  Dumfries  he  had 
written  over  two  hundred  poems,  songs,  etc.,  many  of 
them  of  the  highest  excellence,  and  most  of  them  now 
household  possessions.  Besides  his  official  duties,  we 
know  also  that  he  took  a  great  interest  in  his  home  and 
in  the  education  of  his  children.  Mr.  Gray,  master  of 
the  High  School  of  Dumfries,  who  knew  the  poet  inti- 
mately, wrote  a  long  and  interesting  letter  to  Gilbert 
Burns,  in  which  he  mentions  particularly  the  attention 
he  paid  to  his  children's  education.  c  He  was  a  kind 
and  attentive  father,  and  took  great  delight  in  spending 
his  evenings  in  the  cultivation  of  the  minds  of  his  chil- 
dren. Their  education  was  the  grand  object  of  his  life ; 
and  he  did  not,  like  most  parents,  think  it  sufficient  to 


ROBERT  BURNS  145 

send  them  to  public  schools;  he  was  their  private 
instructor;  and  even  at  that  early  age  bestowed  great 
pains  in  training  their  minds  to  habits  of  thought  and 
reflection,  and  in  keeping  them  pure  from  every  form  of 
vice.  This  he  considered  a  sacred  duty,  and  never  to 
his  last  illness  relaxed  in  his  diligence.' 

Throughout  the  winter  of  1795  ano^  spring  of  1796, 
he  could  only  keep  up  an  irregular  correspondence  with 
Thomson.  'Alas  !'  he  wrote  in  April,  'I  fear  it  will  be 
long  ere  I  tune  my  lyre  again.  I  have  only  known 
existence  by  the  pressure  of  the  heavy  hand  of  sickness, 
and  counted  time  by  the  repercussion  of  pain.  I  close  my 
eyes  in  misery  and  open  them  without  hope.'  Yet  it  was 
literally  on  his  deathbed  that  he  composed  the  exquisite 
song,  O  wert  thou  in  the  Cauld  Blast,  in  honour  of 
Jessie  Lewars,  who  waited  on  him  so  faithfully.  In  June 
he  wrote :  '  I  begin  to  fear  the  worst.  As  to  my  indi- 
vidual self  I  am  tranquil,  and  would  despise  myself  if  I 
were  not ;  but  Burns's  poor  widow  and  half  a  dozen  of 
his  dear  little  ones — helpless  orphans  ! — there,  I  am 
weaker  than  a  woman's  tear.' 

From  Brow,  whither  he  had  gone  to  try  the  effect  of 
sea-bathing,  he  wrote  several  letters  all  in  the  same 
strain,  one  to  Cunningham;  a  pathetic  one  to  Mrs. 
Dunlop,  regretting  her  continued  silence;  and  letters 
begging  a  temporary  loan  to  James  Burness,  Montrose, 
and  to  George  Thomson,  whom  he  had  been  supplying 
with  songs  without  fee  or  reward.  Thomson  at  once 
forwarded  the  amount  asked — five  pounds  !  To  his  wife, 
who  had  not  been  able  to  accompany  him,  he  wrote : 
*  My  dearest  love,  I  delayed  writing  until  I  could  tell  you 
what  effect  sea-bathing  was  likely  to  produce.  It  would 
10 


146  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

be  injustice  to  deny  it  has  eased  my  pain.  ...  I  will 
see  you  on  Sunday.' 

During  his  stay  at  Brow  he  met  again  Mrs.  Riddell, 
and  she  has  left  in  a  letter  her  impression  of  his 
appearance  at  that  time.  'The  stamp  of  death  was 
imprinted  on  his  features.  He  seemed  already  touching 
the  brink  of  eternity.  ...  He  spoke  of  his  death  with 
firmness  as  well  as  feeling  as  an  event  likely  to  happen 
very  soon.  ...  He  said  he  was  well  aware  that  his 
death  would  occasion  some  noise,  and  that  every  scrap 
of  his  writing  would  be  revived  against  him,  to  the 
injury  of  his  future  reputation.  .  .  .  The  conversa- 
tion was  kept  up  with  great  evenness  and  animation  on 
his  side.  I  had  seldom  seen  his  mind  greater  or  more 
collected.' 

When  he  returned  from  Brow  he  was  worse  than  when 
he  went  away,  and  those  who  saw  him  tottering  to  his 
door  knew  that  they  had  looked  their  last  on  the  poet. 
The  question  in  Dumfries  for  a  day  or  two  was,  '  How 
is  Burns  now?'  And  the  question  was  not  long  in 
being  answered.  He  knew  he  was  dying,  but  neither 
his  humour  nor  his  wit  left  him.  'John,'  he  said  to 
one  of  his  brother  volunteers,  '  don't  let  the  awkward 
squad  fire  over  me.' 

He  lingered  on  for  a  day  or  two,  his  wife  hourly 
expecting  to  be  confined  and  unable  to  attend  to 
him,  and  Jessie  Lewars  taking  her  place,  a  constant 
and  devoted  nurse.  On  the  fourth  day  after  his 
return,  July  21,  he  sank  into  delirium,  and  his  chil- 
dren were  summoned  to  the  bedside  of  their  dying 
father,  who  quietly  and  gradually  sank  to  rest.  His 
last  words  showed  that  his  mind  was  still  disturbed 


ROBERT  BURNS  147 

by  the  thought  of  the  small  debt  that  had  caused  him 
so  much  annoyance.  'And  thus  he  passed/  says 
Carlyle,  '  not  softly,  yet  speedily,  into  that  still  country 
where  the  hailstorms  and  fire-showers  do  not  reach,  and 
the  heaviest  laden  wayfarer  at  length  lays  down  his 
load.' 


CHAPTER   IX 

SUMMARY   AND    ESTIMATE 

IN  Mrs.  Riddell's  sketch  of  Burns,  which  appeared 
shortly  after  his  death,  she  starts  with  the  somewhat 
startling  statement  that  poetry  was  not  actually  his  forte. 
She  did  not  question  the  excellence  of  his  songs,  or 
seek  to  depreciate  his  powers  as  a  poet,  but  she  spoke 
of  the  man  as  she  had  known  him,  and  was  one  of  the 
first  to  assert  that  Burns  was  very  much  more  than  an 
uneducated  peasant  with  a  happy  knack  of  versification. 
Even  in  the  present  day  we  hear  too  much  of  the  in- 
spired ploughman  bursting  into  song  as  one  that  could 
not  help  himself,  and  warbling  of  life  and  love  in  a 
kind  of  lyrical  frenzy.  The  fact  is  that  Burns  was  a 
great  intellectual  power,  and  would  have  been  a  force 
in  any  sphere  of  life  or  letters.  All  who  met  him  and 
heard  him  talk  have  insisted  on  the  greatness  of  the 
man,  apart  from  his  achievements  in  poetry.  It  was  not 
his  fame  as  a  poet  that  made  him  the  lion  of  a  season 
in  Edinburgh,  but  the  force  and  brilliancy  of  his  con- 
versation ;  and  it  needs  more  than  the  reputation  of  a 
minstrel  to  explain  the  hold  he  has  on  the  affection  and 
intelligence  of  the  world  to-day. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  would  be  a  mistake  to  accept 

his  intellectual  greatness  as  a  mere  tradition  of  those 

148 


ROBERT  BURNS  149 

who  knew  him,  and  to  regret  that  he  has  not  left  us 
some  long  and  ponderous  work  worthy  of  the  power  he 
possessed.  It  is  an  absurd  idea  to  imagine  that  every 
great  poet  ought  to  write  an  epic  or  a  play.  Burns's 
powers  were  concentrative,  and  he  could  put  into  a 
song  what  a  dramatist  might  elaborate  into  a  five-act 
tragedy;  but  that  is  not  to  say  that  the  dramatist  is 
the  greater  poet.  After  all,  the  song  is  the  more  likely 
to  live,  and  the  more  likely,  therefore,  to  keep  the 
mission  of  the  poet  an  enduring  and  living  influence  in 
the  lives  of  men. 

Still  Burns  might  have  been  a  great  song -writer 
without  becoming  the  name  and  power  he  is  in  the 
world  to-day.  The  lyrical  gift  implies  a  quick  emotional 
sense,  which  in  some  cases  may  be  little  more  than 
a  beautiful  defect  in  a  weak  nature.  But  Burns  was 
essentially  a  strong  man.  His  very  vices  are  the  vices 
of  a  robust  and  healthy  humanity.  Besides  being 
possessed  of  all  the  qualities  of  a  great  singer,  he  was 
at  the  same  time  vigorously  human  and  throbbing  with 
the  love  and  joy  of  life.  It  is  this  sterling  quality  of 
manhood  that  has  made  Burns  the  poet  and  the  power 
he  is.  He  looked  out  on  the  world  with  the  eyes  of  a 
man,  and  saw  things  in  their  true  colours  and  in  their 
natural  relations.  He  regarded  the  world  into  which 
he  had  been  born,  and  saw  it  not  as  some  other  poet 
or  an  artist  or  a  painter  might  have  beheld  it, — for  the 
purposes  of  art, — but  in  all  its  uncompromising  realism ; 
and  what  his  eye  saw  clearly,  his  lips  as  clearly  uttered. 
His  first  and  greatest  gift,  therefore,  as  a  poet  was  his 
manifest  sincerity.  His  men  and  women  are  living 
human  beings ;  his  flowers  are  real  flowers ;  his  dogs, 


150  FAMOUS  SCOTS- 

real  dogs,  and  nothing  more.  All  his  pictures  are 
presented  in  the  simplest  and  fewest  possible  words. 
There  is  no  suspicion  of  trickery ;  no  attempt  to  force 
words  to  carry  a  weight  of  meaning  they  are  incapable 
of  expressing.  He  knew  nothing  of  the  deification  of 
style,  and  on  absolute  truthfulness  and  unidealised 
reality  rested  his  poetical  structure.  Wordsworth 
speaks  of  him — 

'Whose  light  I  hailed  when  first  it  shone, 

And  showed  my  youth 
How  verse  may  build  a  princely  throne 
On  humble  truth.' 

It  is  this  quality  that  made  Burns  the  interpreter  of 
the  lives  of  his  fellow-men,  not  only  to  an  outside  world 
that  knew  them  not,  but  to  themselves.  And  he  has 
glorified  those  lives  in  the  interpretation,  not  by  the 
introduction  of  false  elements  or  the  elimination  of 
unlovely  features,  but  simply  by  his  insistence,  in  spite 
of  the  sordidness  of  poverty,  on  the  naked  dignity  of 
man. 

Everything  he  touched  became  interesting  because 
it  was  interesting  to  him,  and  he  spoke  forth  what  he 
felt.  For  Burns  did  not  go  outside  of  his  own  life, 
either  in  time  or  place,  for  subject.  There  are  poetry 
and  romance,  tragedy  and  comedy  ever  waiting  for  the 
man  who  has  eyes  to  see  them;  and  Burns's  stage 
was  the  parish  of  Tarbolton,  and  he  found  his  poetry 
in  (or  rendered  poetical)  the  ordinary  humdrum  life 
round  about  him.  For  that  reason  it  is,  perhaps,  that 
he  has  been  called  the  satirist  and  singer  of  a  parish. 
Had  he  lived  nowadays,  he  would  have  been  relegated 
to  the  kailyard,  there  to  cultivate  his  hardy  annuals  and 


ROBERT  BURNS  151 

indigenous  daisies.  For  Burns  did  not  affect  exotics, 
and  it  requires  a  specialist  in  manure  to  produce  blue 
dandelions  or  sexless  ferns.  In  the  narrow  sense  of  the 
word  he  was  not  parochial.  Whilst  true  to  class  and 
country,  he  reached  out  a  hand  to  universal  man.  A 
Scotsman  of  Scotsmen,  he  endeared  himself  to  the 
hearts  of  a  people ;  but  he  was  from  first  to  last  a  man, 
and  so  has  found  entrance  to  the  hearts  of  all  men. 
Although  local  in  subject,  he  was  artistic  in  treatment ; 
he  might  address  the  men  and  women  of  Mauchline, 
but  he  spoke  with  the  voice  of  humanity,  and  his  message 
was  for  mankind. 

Besides  interpreting  the  lives  of  the  Scottish  peasantry, 
he  revived  for  them  their  nationality.  For  he  was  but 
the  last  of  the  great  bards  that  sang  the  Iliad  of  Scot- 
land ;  and  in  him,  when  patriotism  was  all  but  dead,  and 
a  hybrid  culture  was  making  men  ashamed  of  their  land 
and  their  language,  the  voices  of  nameless  ballad- 
makers  and  forgotten  singers  blended  again  into  one 
great  voice  that  sang  of  the  love  of  country,  till  men 
remembered  their  fathers,  and  gloried  in  the  name 
of  Scotsmen.  His  patriotism,  however,  was  not 
parochial.  It  was  no  mere  prejudice  which  bound  him 
hand  and  foot  to  Scottish  theme  and  Scottish  song. 
He  knew  that  there  were  lands  beyond  the  Cheviots, 
and  that  men  of  other  countries  and  other  tongues  joyed 
and  sorrowed,  toiled  and  sweated  and  struggled  and  hoped 
even  as  he  did.  He  was  attached  to  the  people  of  his 
own  rank  in  life,  the  farmers  and  ploughmen  amongst 
whom  he  had  been  born  and  bred ;  but  his  sympathies 
went  out  to  all  men,  prince  or  peasant,  beggar  or  king, 
if  they  were  worthy  of  the  name  of  men  he  recognised 


152  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

them  as  brothers.  It  is  this  sympathy  which  gives  him 
his  intimate  knowledge  of  mankind.  He  sees  into  the 
souls  of  his  fellows;  the  thoughts  of  their  hearts  are 
visible  to  his  piercing  eye.  He  who  had  mixed  only 
with  hard-working  men,  and  scarcely  ever  been  beyond 
the  boundary  of  his  parish,  wrote  of  court  and  parliament 
as  if  he  had  known  princes  and  politicians  from  his  boy- 
hood. The  goodwife  of  Wauchope  House  would  hardly 
credit  that  he  had  come  straight  from  the  plough-stilts — 

'  And  then  sae  slee  ye  crack  your  jokes 
O'  Willie  Pitt  and  Charlie  Fox; 
Our  great  men  a'  sae  weel  descrive, 
And  how  to  gar  the  nation  thrive, 
Ane  maist  would  swear  ye  dwalt  amang  them, 
And  as  ye  saw  them  sae  ye  sang  them.' 

But  his  intuitive  knowledge  of  men  is  apparent  in 
almost  all  he  wrote.  Every  character  he  has  drawn 
stands  out  a  living  and  breathing  personality.  This  is 
greatly  due  to  the  fact  that  he  studied  those  he  met, 
as  men,  dismissing  the  circumstance  of  birth  and  rank, 
of  costly  apparel,  or  beggarly  rags.  For  rank  and 
station  after  all  are  mere  accidents,  and  count  for 
nothing  in  an  estimate  of  character.  Indeed,  Bu^ns 
was  too  often  inclined  from  his  hard  experience  of  life 
to  go  further  than  this,  and  to  count  them  disqualifying 
circumstances.  This  aggressive  independence  was,  how- 
ever, always  as  far  removed  from  insolence  as  it  was 
from  servility.  He  saw  clearly  that  the  'pith  o'  sense 
and  pride  o'  worth  '  are  beyond  all  the  dignities  a  king 
can  bestow ;  and  he  looked  to  the  time  when  class  dis- 
tinctions would  cease,  and  the  glory  of  manhood  be  the 
highest  earthly  dignity. 


ROBERT  BURNS  153 

'Then  let  us  pray  that  come  it  may— 

As  come  it  will  for  a'  that — 
That  sense  and  worth,  o'er  a'  the  earth, 
May  bear  the  gree  and  a'  that ! 
For  a'  that,  and  a'  that, 

It's  comin'  yet,  for  a'  that, 
That  man  to  man,  the  warld  o'er, 
Shall  brothers  be  for  a'  that ! ' 

Besides  this  abiding  love  of  his  fellow-man,  or  because 
of  it,  Burns  had  also  a  childlike  love  of  nature  and  all 
created  things.  He  sings  of  the  mountain  daisy  turned 
up  by  his  plough;  his  heart  goes  out  to  the  mouse 
rendered  homeless  after  all  its  provident  care.  Listening 
at  home  while  the  storm  made  the  doors  and  windows 
rattle,  he  bethought  him  on  the  cattle  and  sheep  and 
birds  outside — 

'  I  thought  me  on  the  ourie  cattle 
Or  silly  sheep,  wha  bide  this  brattle 

O'  wintry  war, 
And  thro'  the  drift,  deep-lairing,  sprattle 

Beneath  a  scaur.' 

Nor  is  there  in  his  love  of  nature  any  transcendental 
strain ;  no  mawkish  sentimentality,  and  consequently  in 
its  expression  no  bathos.  Everywhere  in  his  poetry 
nature  comes  in,  at  times  in  artistically  selected  detail, 
at  times  again  with  a  deft  suggestive  touch  that  is 
telling  and  effective,  yet  always  in  harmony  with  the 
feeling  of  the  poem,  and  always  subordinate  to  it.  His 
descriptions  of  scenery  are  never  dragged  in.  They  are 
incidental  and  complementary;  human  life  and  human 
feeling  are  the  first  consideration ;  to  this  his  scenery  is 
but  the  setting  and  background.  He  is  never  carried 


154  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

away  by  the  force  or  beauty  of  his  drawing  as  a  smaller 
artist  might  have  been.  The  picture  is  given  with 
simple  conciseness,  and  he  leaves  it ;  nor  does  he  ever 
attempt  to  elaborate  a  detail  into  a  separate  poem.  The 
description  of  the  burn  in  Halloween  is  most  beautiful 
in  itself,  yet  it  is  but  a  detail  in  a  great  picture — 

'Whyles  owre  a  linn  the  burnie  plays, 

As  thro'  the  glen  it  wimpl't; 
Whyles  round  a  rocky  scaur  it  strays  ; 

Whyles  in  a  wiel  it  dimpl't; 
Whyles  glitter'd  to  the  nightly  rays, 

Wi'  bickerin',  dancin*  dazzle  ; 
Whyles  cookit  underneath  the  braes, 
Below  the  spreading  hazel, 

Unseen  that  night.' 

That  surely  is  the  perfection  of  description ;  whilst  the 
wimple  of  the  burn  is  echoed  in  the  music  of  the 
verse ! 

Allied  to  the  clearness  of  vision  and  truthfulness  of 
presentment  of  Burns,  growing  out  of  them  it  may  be, 
is  that  graphic  power  in  which  he  stands  unexcelled. 
He  is  a  great  artist,  and  word-painting  is  not  the  least 
of  his  many  gifts.  He  combines  terseness  and  lucidity, 
which  is  a  rare  combination  in  letters ;  his  phrasing  is 
as  beautiful  and  fine  as  it  is  forcible,  which  is  a  dis- 
tinction rarer  still.  Hundreds  of  examples  of  his 
pregnant  phrasing  might  be  cited,  but  it  is  best  to  see 
them  in  the  poems.  Many  have  become  everyday  ex- 
pressions, and  have  passed  into  the  proverbs  of  the 
country. 

Another  of  Burns's  gifts  was  the  saving  grace  of  humour. 
This,  of  course,  is  not  altogether  a  quality  distinct  in 
itself,  but  rather  a  particular  mode  in  which  love  or 


ROBERT  BURNS  155 

tenderness  or  pity  may  manifest  itself.  This  humour  is 
ever  glinting  forth  from  his  writings.  Some  of  his  poems 
— The  Farmer's  Address  to  his  Auld  Mare,  for  example 
— are  simply  bathed  in  it,  and  we  see  the  subject  glowing 
in  its  light,  soft  and  tremulous,  as  of  an  autumn  sunset. 
In  others,  again,  it  flashes  and  sparkles,  more  sportive 
than  tender.  But,  however  it  manifest  itself,  we  recognise 
at  once  that  it  has  a  character  of  its  own,  which  marks 
it  off  from  the  humour  of  any  other  writer ;  it  is  a  peculiar 
possession  of  Burns. 

Perhaps  the  poem  in  which  all  Burns's  poetic  qualities 
are  seen  at  their  best  is  The  Jolly  Beggars.  The  subject 
may  be  low  and  the  materials  coarse,  but  that  only  makes 
the  finished  poem  a  more  glorious  achievement.  For  the 
poem  is  a  unity.  We  see  those  vagabonds  for  a  moment's 
space  holding  high  revel  in  Poosie  Nansie's ;  but  in  that 
brief  glance  we  see  them  from  their  birth  to  their  death. 
They  are  flung  into  the  world,  and  go  zigzagging  through 
it,  chaffering  and  cheating,  swaggering  and  swearing ; 
kicked  and  cuffed  from  parish  to  parish ;  their  only  joy 
of  existence  an  occasional  night  like  this,  a  carnival  of 
drink  and  all  sensuality;  snapping  their  fingers  in  the 
face  of  the  world,  and  as  they  have  lived  so  going  down 
defiantly  to  death,  a  laugh  on  their  lips  and  a  curse  in 
their  heart.  Every  character  in  it  is  individual  and 
distinct  from  his  neighbour ;  the  language  from  first  to 
last  simple,  sensuous,  musical.  Of  this  poem  Matthew 
Arnold  says  :  *  It  has  a  breadth,  truth,  and  power  which 
make  the  famous  scene  in  Auerbach's  cellar  of  Goethe's 
Faust  seem  artificial  and  tame  beside  it,  and  which  are 
only  matched  by  Shakspeare  and  Aristophanes.' 

The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  has  usually,  in  Scotland, 


156  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

been  the  most  lauded  of  his  poems.  Many  writers  give 
it  as  his  best.  It  is  a  pious  opinion,  but  is  not  sound 
criticism.  Burns  handicapped  himself,  not  only  by  the 
stanza  he  selected  for  this  poem,  but  also  by  the  attitude 
he  took  towards  his  subject.  He  is  never  quite  himself 
in  it.  We  admire  its  many  beauties  ;  we  see  the  life  of 
the  poor  made  noble  and  dignified ;  we  see,  in  the  end, 
the  soul  emerging  from  the  tyranny  of  time  and  circum- 
stance ;  but  with  all  that  we  feel  that  there  is  something 
awanting.  The  priest-like  father  is  drawn  from  life,  and 
the  picture  is  beautiful;  not  less  deftly  drawn  is  the 
mother's  portrait,  though  it  be  not  so  frequently  quoted  : 

'  The  mother,  wi'  a  woman's  wiles,  can  spy 
What  makes  the  youth  so  bashfu'  and  so  grave  ; 
Weel  pleased  to  think  her  bairn's  respected  like  the  lave.' 

The  last  line  gives  one  of  the  most  natural  and  most 
subtle  touches  in  the  whole  poem.  The  closing  verses 
are,  I  think,  unhappy.  The  poet  has  not  known  when 
to  stop,  keeps  writing  after  he  has  finished,  and  so  becomes 
stilted  and  artificial. 

It  is  in  his  songs,  however,  more  than  in  his  poems, 
that  we  find  Burns  most  regularly  at  his  best.  And 
excellence  in  song-writing  is  a  rare  gift.  The  snatches 
scattered  here  and  there  throughout  the  plays  of  Shak- 
speare  are  perhaps  the  only  collection  of  lyrics  that  can 
at  all  stand  comparison  with  the  wealth  of  minstrelsy 
Burns  has  left  behind  him.  This  was  his  undying  legacy 
to  the  world.  Song-writing  was  a  labour  of  love,  almost 
his  only  comfort  and  consolation  in  the  dark  days  of  his 
later  years.  He  set  himself  to  this  as  to  a  congenial  task, 
and  he  knew  that  he  was  writing  himself  into  the  hearts 


ROBERT  BURNS  157 

of  unborn  generations.  His  songs  live;  they  are  im- 
mortal, because  every  one  is  a  bit  of  his  soul.  These 
are  no  feverish,  hysterical  jingles  of  clinking  verse,  dead 
save  for  the  animating  breath  of  music.  They  sing 
themselves,  because  the  spirit  of  song  is  in  them.  Quite 
as  marvellous  as  his  excellence  in  this  department  of 
poetry  is  his  variety  of  subject.  He  has  a  song  for  every 
age ;  a  musical  interpretation  of  every  mood.  But  this  is 
a  subject  for  a  book  to  itself.  His  songs  are  sung  all 
over  the  world.  The  love  he  sings  appeals  to  all,  for  it 
is  elemental,  and  is  the  love  of  all.  Heart  speaks  to 
heart  in  the  songs  of  Robert  Burns ;  there  is  a  free- 
masonry in  them  that  binds  Scotsmen  to  Scotsmen  across 
the  seas  in  the  firmest  bonds  of  brotherhood. 

What  place  Burns  occupies  as  a  poet  has  been  deter- 
mined not  so  much  by  the  voice  of  criticism,  as  by  the 
enthusiastic  way  in  which  his  fellow-mortals  have  taken 
him  to  their  heart.  The  summing-up  of  a  judge  counts  for 
little  when  the  jury  has  already  made  up  its  mind.  What 
matters  it  whether  a  critic  argues  Burns  into  a  first 
or  second  or  third  rate  poet?  His  countrymen,  and 
more  than  his  countrymen,  his  brothers  all  the  world 
over,  who  read  in  his  writings  the  joys  and  sorrows,  the 
temptations  and  trials,  the  sins  and  shortcomings  of  a 
great-hearted  man,  have  accepted  him  as  a  prophet,  and 
set  him  in  the  front  rank  of  immortals.  They  admire 
many  poets  ;  they  love  Robert  Burns.  They  have  been 
told  their  love  is  unreasoning  and  unreasonable.  It  may 
be  so.  Love  goes  by  instinct  more  than  by  reason  ;  and 
who  shall  say  it  is  wrong?  Yet  Burns  is  not  loved 
because  of  his  faults  and  failings,  but  in  spite  of  them. 
His  sins  are  not  hidden.  He  himself  confessed  them 


158  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

again  and  again,  and  repented  in  sackcloth  and  ashes. 
If  he  did  not  always  abjure  his  weaknesses,  he  denounced 
them,  and  with  no  uncertain  voice ;  rior  do  we  know  how 
hardly  he  strove  to  do  more. 

What  estimate  is  to  be  taken  of  Burns  as  a  man 
will  have  many  and  various  answers.  Those  who  still 
denounce  him  as  the  chief  of  sinners,  and  without 
mercy  condemn  him  out  of  his  own  mouth,  are  those 
whom  Burns  has  pilloried  to  all  posterity.  There  are 
dull,  phlegmatic  beings  with  blood  no  warmer  than 
ditch-water,  who  are  virtuous  and  sober  citizens  because 
they  have  never  felt  the  force  of  temptation.  What 
power  could  tempt  them?  The  tree  may  be  parched 
and  blistered  in  the  heat  of  noonday,  but  the  parasitical 
fungus  draining  its  sap  remains  cool — and  poisonous. 
So  in  the  glow  of  sociability  the  Pharisee  remains  cold 
and  clammy ;  the  fever  of  love  leaves  his  blood  at  zero. 
How  can  such  anomalies  understand  a  man  of  Burns's 
wild  and  passionate  nature,  or,  indeed,  human  nature 
at  all  ?  The  broad  fact  remains,  however  much  we  may 
deplore  his  sins  and  shortcomings,  they  are  the  sins 
and  shortcomings  of  a  large-hearted,  healthy,  human 
being.  Had  he  loved  less  his  fellow  men  and  women, 
he  might  have  been  accounted  a  better  man.  After  all, 
too,  it  must  be  remembered  that  his  failings  have  been 
consistently  exaggerated.  Coleridge,  in  his  habit  of 
drawing  nice  distinctions,  admits  that  Burns  was  not  a 
man  of  degraded  genius,  but  a  degraded  man  of  genius. 
Burns  was  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  In  spite  of 
the  occasional  excesses  of  his  later  years,  he  did  not 
degenerate  into  drunkenness,  nor  was  the  sense  of  his 
responsibilities  as  a  husband,  a  father,  and  a  man  less 


ROBERT  BURNS  159 

clear  and  acute  in  the  last  months  of  his  life  than  it  had 
ever  been.  Had  he  lived  a  few  years  longer,  we  should 
have  seen  the  man  mellowed  by  sorrow  and  suffering, 
braving  life,  not  as  he  had  done  all  along  with  the 
passionate  vehemence  of  undisciplined  youth,  but  with 
the  fortitude  and  dignity  of  one  who  had  learned  that 
contentment  and  peace  are  gifts  the  world  cannot  give, 
and,  if  he  haply  find  them  in  his  own  heart,  which  it 
cannot  take  away.  That  is  the  lesson  we  read  in  the 
closing  months  of  Burns's  chequered  career. 

But  it  was  not  to  be.  His  work  was  done.  The 
message  God  had  sent  him  into  the  world  to  deliver  he 
had  delivered,  imperfectly  and  with  faltering  lips  it  may 
be,  but  a  divine  message  all  the  same.  And  because  it 
is  divine  men  still  hear  it  gladly  and  believe. 

Let  all  his  failings  and  defects  be  acknowledged,  his 
sins  as  a  man  and  his  limitations  as  a  poet,  the  want  of 
continuity  and  purpose  in  his  work  and  life ;  but  at  the 
same  time  let  his  nobler  qualities  be  weighed  against 
these,  and  the  scale  '  where  the  pure  gold  is,  easily  turns 
the  balance.'  In  the  words  of  Angellier :  '  Admiration 
grows  in  proportion  as  we  examine  his  qualities.  When 
we  think  of  his  sincerity,  of  his  rectitude,  of  his  kind- 
ness towards  man  and  beast ;  of  his  scorn  of  all  that  is 
base,  his  hatred  of  all  knavery  which  in  itself  would  be 
an  honour ;  of  his  disinterestedness,  of  the  fine  impulses 
of  his  heart,  and  the  high  aspirations  of  his  spirit ;  of 
the  intensity  and  idealism  necessary  to  maintain  his  soul 
above  its  circumstances;  when  we  reflect  that  he  has 
expressed  all  these  generous  sentiments  to  the  extent 
of  their  constituting  his  intellectual  life ;  that  they  have 
fallen  from  him  as  jewels  ...  as  if  his  soul  had  been 


160  FAMOUS  SCOTS 

a  furnace  for  the  purification  of  precious  metals,  we  are 
tempted  to  regard  him  as  belonging  to  the  elect  spirits 
of  humanity,  to  those  gifted  with  exceptional  goodness. 
When  we  recall  what  he  suffered,  what  he  surmounted,  and 
what  he  has  effected ;  against  what  privations  his  genius 
struggled  into  birth  and  lived ;  the  perseverance  of  his 
apprenticeship;  his  intellectual  exploits;  and,  after  all, 
his  glory,  we  are  inclined  to  maintain  that  what  he  failed 
to  accomplish  or  undertake  is  as  nothing  in  comparison 
with  his  achievements.  .  .  .  There  is  nothing  left  but  to 
confess  that  the  clay  of  which  he  was  made  was  thick 
with  diamonds,  and  that  his  life  was  one  of  the  most 
valiant  and  the  most  noble  a  poet  ever  has  lived.' 

With  Burns's  own  words  we  may  fitly  conclude. 
They  are  words  not  merely  to  be  read  and  admired, 
but  to  be  remembered  in  our  hearts  and  practised  in 
our  lives — 

*  Then  gently  scan  your  brother  Man, 

Still  gentler  sister  Woman ; 
Tho'  they  may  gang  a  kennin  wrang, 

To  step  aside  is  human : 
One  point  must  still  be  greatly  dark, 

The  moving  Why  they  do  it ; 
And  just  as  lamely  can  ye  mark, 

How  far  perhaps  they  rue  it. 

Who  made  the  heart,  'tis  He  alone 

Decidedly  can  try  us, 
He  knows  each  chord — its  various  tone, 

Each  spring — its  various  bias: 
Then  at  the  balance  let's  be  mute, 

We  never  can  adjust  it  j 
What's  done  we  partly  may  compute, 

But  know  not  what's  resisted.' 


OF 

SWVER8ITY 


YB   13989 


